Heaven in a Wildflower (28 page)

They stayed until the sun began going down, and Elton said it was time to be getting home while they could still see their way.

He locked the door and gate, then paused before pointing and crying out in astonishment, “Look! There! Coming out of that crevice. Wildflowers. And your mother’s coffin is right on the other side.”

Anjele followed his gaze to see tiny flowers in a rainbow of colors, sprouting from the tomb.

He reached out with shaking fingers to lovingly caress the delicate petals. “Don’t you see?” he whispered in awe. “It’s life, growing out of the very aperture of death.”

Leo cautiously approached the crypt. He had just heard the chimes from Jackson Square and knew it was midnight. No one had seen him go into the cemetery. Even the Yankee patrols avoided the place, figuring nobody would want to hang around there. He sure as hell didn’t but was eager for his money. He was just reaching above the door to get it when The Voice spoke, startling him, as always. “Shit,” he said, as the money slipped from his fingers. He quickly stooped to grope for it in the inky darkness. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Have you anything to report?” The sound came, as always, from inside the cold, gray walls.

“Nothing. Sinclair don’t do nothing but hang around the house or sit at his wife’s tomb. I tell you,” he added with a derisive snort, “I’m getting sick of hanging around graves.”

“Shut up,” The Voice hissed. “You’re paid to do whatever’s necessary to keep an eye on him. Are you sure he hasn’t had any visitors? Talked to anyone?”

Leo related John Carraway’s visit but said he had no idea what they had discussed. Carraway didn’t stay very long, he recalled.

The Voice didn’t find the information important. He knew Carraway, and he would not be the sort to work undercover for the Confederates, so he’d know nothing of the plates, and Elton wouldn’t confide in him. “Listen to me,” he said then, making his voice harsh, stern. “It’s time for you to know that Elton Sinclair has something that belongs to the Federal government. I was in hopes you would see him make contact with someone, passing it along to them, and it could be recovered quietly, discreetly, without a fuss. But from what you’ve told me, he’s done nothing out of the ordinary.”

“That’s right. Just sits up at that tomb. Either inside or out. Doesn’t give a hang about his crops, looks like.”

“The time has come for us to move. I want you now to do whatever you have to, to make him talk and find out where the property is hidden.”

Leo grinned, excitement building. He’d been waiting for a chance to get rough with Sinclair. “Just tell me what it is you’re looking for.”

“I don’t want any trouble,” The Voice emphasized. “I want you to catch him by himself. Be sure to wear a mask so he doesn’t recognize you. Tell him you know what he took from the Mint, and one way or another, he’s going to give it to you.”

“Maybe I’ll get him at the tomb.”

“I leave the place up to you, but I want it done late Saturday, then bring what he gives you to me.”

“And what’s that?”

The Voice decided to tell him. He was going to find out, anyway, when Elton handed them to him. “Engraving plates, used to print money for the Federal government, and if they fall into the hands of the Confederacy, the results could be disastrous.”

“Well, I don’t give a damn about that.” Leo laughed. “Only what you pay me. If I get them plates, you’ll pay me extra, right?”

“You’ll be rewarded for a job well done. Now go. And don’t fail me.”

“I won’t.” Leo stuffed his money in his pocket and broke into a run, anxious to get away from the cemetery.

He had thought about hanging around, hiding, waiting to see the man behind the voice when he emerged from the mausoleum.

But something told him he was better off not knowing.

Chapter Eighteen

Anjele had never dreamed she would socialize with Yankees. Had it not been for her father’s plea for her to take her mother’s place, she would never have consented. And to make matters worse, Claudia’s new so-called friend, Elisabeth Hembree, and Anjele’s nemesis, Major Hembree, had taken over the home of Drusilla and Hardy Maxwell, close friends of her family.

“Where did Miss Drusilla and Mister Hardy go?” Anjele asked her father between clenched teeth as they made their way up the wide steps to the two-story mansion.

Claudia, behind them, impatiently having to wait for Raymond to maneuver the steps with his cane, spoke up before Elton had a chance. “They live in the basement. Elisabeth let them stay on so Drusilla could be her housekeeper. She doesn’t trust Negroes. Hardy, I understand, still works at the bank, only he’s handling strictly
Federal
money now,” she added, amused by the irony.

Anjele, her hand tucked in the crook of her father’s arm, felt him tense. Not only must it be terrible for him to think of lifelong friends being so humiliated as to be relegated to living in the basement of their own home, but the reality of Claudia’s obviously moving over to the side of the enemy had to be heartbreaking. Anjele wasn’t really surprised.

“We won’t stay any longer than necessary,” Elton whispered to Anjele. “I heard late this afternoon General Butler won’t be here, and frankly I doubt he was ever expected. The Yankees just wanted to humiliate us by forcing us to socialize with them.”

“But there are those among us who are tickled to death to be invited.” She meant Claudia, and he knew.

“Well, grit your teeth and don’t let them make you mad, Angel.” He patted her hand. “That’s what they want, to get us riled so they can single out potential troublemakers.”

She promised they’d not have the satisfaction.

Major Hembree stood in the receiving line, wearing full dress uniform—dark blue coat, double rows of brass buttons, gold epaulets. His silver scabbard hung on his left side, a red tasseled sash about his waist. The trousers were light blue with gold stripes down the sides.

Anjele tried not to frown as she looked his wife over and recognized Effie Lauteur’s work in the elegant white silk taffeta gown.

Anjele, respectfully in mourning despite being obliged to attend a social function, wore a sedate gown of black bombazine. Claudia, however, had rebelliously stated she had no intentions of being so drab and morbid.

Major Hembree recognized Anjele right away. He turned to whisper to his wife, who listened with a frown, then joined him in a scornful glare as he greeted Anjele by remarking, “I
hope
it’s nice to see you.”

“And I
hope
it’s nice to be here,” she fired back.

A few moments later, she begged her father, “Can we go now? I can’t stand all this.”

“I’m afraid not. It would be rude. Let’s have some refreshments…” He blanched at the sight of Drusilla Maxwell, in the gray costume of housekeeper, doggedly placing trays of food on a table. “Dear Lord,” he said under his breath.

Anjele caught his arm as he started towards her. “Do you think we should? I mean, it might embarrass her if we speak to her.”

Just then Drusilla looked up as though she’d been expecting them. After quickly making sure no one was looking, she motioned them to follow her to the service hallway. Tearfully, she hugged them both before urging, “Tell any of our friends you see here they’re not to be embarrassed for me, but it might be best if they ignored me. It…” She stammered, unnerved, “It makes it harder for me.

“And of course,” she added bitterly, “it’s what
they
want, to make all of us feel like fools, break our spirits so we’ll bow down and accept things and not make any trouble.”

“What is really going on?” Elton was anxious to find out. “We stay out of town as much as possible, so we don’t get much information.”

“Some of the widows worried about losing everything are ingratiating themselves with the officers’ wives,” she said angrily. “And Hardy was telling me the cane growers are coming in and fraternizing with Federal provost marshals in hopes of getting favors, like help in keeping the slaves under control and working, so they can get this year’s crop in. Everybody pretty much believes once General Butler gets settled, he’ll come up with some kind of law that says all the field workers have to be paid wages.

“And”—she paused to shake her head in dismay—“I guess you heard General Butler had that man who yanked down a Union flag hanged.”

Not having heard, Anjele gasped in horror, but Elton nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

Drusilla rushed to explain her real reason for drawing them away from the party. “Hardy said if I saw you here, to ask you to please slip down in the basement. He’s wanting to talk to you. Says it’s important.”

Elton sighed and reluctantly agreed. He told Anjele to go back to the party, promising he wouldn’t be long. He didn’t want to see Hardy but decided to get it over with, worried that if he didn’t, Hardy might go to BelleClair, and Elton didn’t want that. He intended to mind his own business, in hopes the Yankees would leave him and his plantation alone. It was wishful thinking, but in his misery since Twyla died, it was all he had to hope for. And not merely for his sake, for had Anjele stayed where she was, he wouldn’t care what happened anymore. For her sake, he sought survival.

He knew how to get to the cellar, for one of their earlier secret meetings had been held there. Quietly he slipped out the back door, groping his way in the darkness behind thick shrubs to the wooden doors covering narrow steps leading downward. He picked his way carefully.

Hardy heard him coming and was waiting. The air smelled sour, for cellars in New Orleans were a rarity, and those who dared have them knew the consequences of constant dampness. Elton grimaced to think that Hardy had never imagined he’d one day be forced to live in his.

They shook hands, Elton reminding Hardy he didn’t have much time.

“This won’t take long. I thought you should know they’re asking questions about the Mint takeover.”

Elton tensed. “Why? They’ve got control now. What difference does it make who was responsible? Besides, what’s there to worry about? We all wore masks, and the officials running the place hightailed it north once we turned them loose. All we did was shut the place down.”

“They’ve taken inventory.”

“So? We didn’t steal any money,” Elton said. “The takeover was merely a statement, a demonstration of secession.”

“I know, but they’re claiming a set of engraving plates is missing. New ones. If they’d known about it, they wouldn’t have printed a hundred and fifty million new greenbacks at another mint. They could have stopped circulation. Now it’s too late. If the plates fall into the hands of the Confederacy, it could be economically disastrous.”

“Ye Gods, man,” Elton roared, “which side are you on?”

Hardy withered before his blazing glare, but only for a moment. Smothered by his surroundings as a reminder of what the war had already cost him, he lashed out, “You aren’t living in a cellar, Sinclair. And your wife isn’t slaving for the Yankees in her own home. What you and I and the others tried to do all those months in secret meetings didn’t work. There’s no way we can help the Confederacy now. Like it or not, we’re part of the Union again.

“We can’t beat them,” he went on, lowering his voice as he remembered what was going on right above them. “So we have to find a way to join them, in a way that will still give us our self-respect. Some of the sugar growers are even talking about forming a conservative wing of a Unionist group in an attempt to restore Louisiana to the Union while the war is still going on.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Not when you think about it. They plan to ask for two things—keeping slavery and having representation in the state legislature based on total population, which would, of course, give most of the power to the black-belt parishes—the slave owners.”

“It won’t happen,” Elton predicted.

“It can, and it will, if they don’t consider us Rebels, which they will”—he warned—“if they find out we were part of the takeover of the Mint and one of us did, in fact, steal those plates for the Confederacy.”

“I’m no longer a part of any of this. All I want is peace for my family and my plantation. If any of you try to say I was involved in that takeover, I’ll deny it.”

Hardy sneered. “Nobody is admitting anything. But you don’t come to our meetings anymore, and you don’t know what’s going on. I was stupid enough to think you cared, but you don’t.”

“That’s right. Now if that’s all you wanted, I need to be getting back upstairs before I’m missed.”

“Yes, that’s all,” Hardy said in disgust.

Anjele was miserable, but Claudia was happily dancing the night away in the arms of Union soldiers. She felt so sorry for Raymond, who was forced to watch, standing beside her and leaning on his cane.

“See the way those bluebellies keep looking over here and smirking? They figure I got this bad leg from the war, and they’re goading me by showing me they can dance with my wife, and I can’t.”

Anjele soothed, “Don’t let them get you riled. That’s what they want. Pretend you don’t care.”

“I don’t.”

Anjele wasn’t surprised but made no comment.

With a catch in his throat, he murmured, “You’re the only woman I ever wanted to dance with, the only woman I ever wanted for my wife. I was such a fool. I always took it for granted, ‘cause you were promised to me, but I see now I should’ve tried harder to make you love me as I loved you, and you wouldn’t have turned to another, and—”