With One Look (7 page)

"Whatever for?"

Jade bit her lip with vexation, wishing she could see these people. It was all so confusing. "I cannot see," she thought to explain. "I'm very confused and I need to speak to someone, someone who can explain what has happened to ... to me."

"I am explaining to you." The Madame's voice lifted angrily. "You are in a brothel, a bordello, a whorehouse— does any of that sound familiar?"

"No." Jade shook her head, becoming more confused, frightened. "This cannot be....

Please," Jade insisted. "I should like to see someone in charge."

Mercedes's heart broke as she witnessed Jade's inability to accept the situation. Before the Madame lost all patience, she tried to intervene. "Mary—"

"Mary? My name is Jade Terese—"

"Not anymore," Madame Charmane interrupted. "From now on you are Mary. I like it much better. And...." She came off the chair and leaned over the girl. Her hand reached up to the jade cross hanging from Jade's neck. A hard yank and the chain broke with the young lady's gasp. "I can't have you reminding my customers of their religious obligations, can I?"

Jade Terese looked confused as she reached a hand to her bare neck. She didn't believe this.

How could it be true? A brothel? This woman bought her from those men and thought she would work in a brothel, bedding men!

"No!" She shook her head, looking suddenly fierce. "No, never! I would die.... I would die!

What makes you think you can do this to me? I am not alone in the world. The Reverend—" She stopped, her panic rising. "I have to get out of this place."

Someone, one of the men, gently pushed her back to the chair and she heard a simple statement through her mounting terror. "I see a little persuasion will be necessary. Especially if you are to stand the block."

"Oh, no, Madame! Please don't do that to her, I beg you! She is too new, too frightened!" "Exactly why I will have it." Madame Charmane moved to the door, the silent shells of her

men followed. "Welcome to my house, Mary. Let's see to the first lesson. Obedience, absolute obedience ..."

*****

Twilight reached through the windows, darkening the rooms when Madame opened the door again to Mercedes's room. She found the young woman kneeling at the bedside, apparently deep in prayer. Mild amusement entered her voice as she asked, "Think your God listens to a harlot's prayers?"

Startled hazel eyes came opened, and Mercedes stood quickly to her feet. She took in the signs, the terrible signs: the relaxed features of the Madame's face, a detached and calm air that surrounded her, like a lazy and well-fed cat who watched the world from indifferent eyes.

The vicious lust had been satisfied.

Now would be the time to ask for a favor, Mercedes knew: the rare outing, a new gown or perfume, a mailing posted. For horribly, the Madame found this generosity only after a violent episode.

It had been very bad for Jade Therese.

"We should have a full house tonight. You are to prepare Mary for the block."

Mercedes searched the woman's face and knew it would be futile to protest the cruel measure. "Madame, please. She should have the concoction then, to ease the horror of it."

The concoction was a powerful potion made in part of opium cubes and strange-smelling herbs and secret medicines, a potion bought from the voodoo queen—whoever she was. It would send Jade Terese to a heavenly plane of intoxication, a place where it would be impossible to feel pain or fear, a place where all women welcome a man's desire. Even a virgin, if she was a virgin. It did not last very long, a couple of hours, but it would be enough. It was very expensive, and the Madame used it sparingly. Once in a situation similar to Jade Terese's. For Angel on the eve of her death.

Mercedes held her breath as the Madame looked for a moment irritated. "My friend had mentioned that the potion might be best. Perhaps she does need a little help acting the part. Very well—"

The two menservants appeared, holding Jade's arms, half dragging her, half holding her up.

Mercedes quickly assessed the damage, searching for signs of physical injury, though it was not likely the Madame would damage the physical beauty she meant to sell. Jade wore only the thin orange silk robe, her hair falling over that in chaotic disarray. Tears streaked her pale face. The two men brought her to the bed and pushed her down.

door.

"Don't disappoint me, Mercedes."

"Yes, Madame," Mercedes said, nodding curtly as the Madame and her servants shut the

Mercedes went quickly to Jade's side. Jade stiffened with alarm until Mercedes whispered,

"Jade Terese. It's me—Mercedes."

"Mercedes ..." A trembling hand reached to touch the voice before she fell into Mercedes's arms. "Did you hear her scream?"

"Who?"

"My servant, Maydrian!" With a trembling voice Jade told of the nightmare she had just survived. "Maydrian, poor old Maydrian, is tied and bound in the basement. She was being tortured... somehow. I couldn't see, and the stench, the terrible stench, and I couldn't see! Maydrian was screaming." Jade squeezed her eyes shut as if to escape the memory. "A horrible muffled sound… The Madame made me fall to my knees to save her. I told her she would be hung for this, tarred and feathered, pillared and then hung, that she was too horrid to be believed. She slapped me! She says she will let me tell my sorry story to the constable tonight, that he is one of her most loyal customers. Is that true? Can that be true?"

"I am afraid that the constable often visits this house. The Madame pays him very well for his protection."

Jade stiffened, her thoughts tumbling with confusion and incredulity over this world gone mad. "She said she will be happy to kill the old woman if I do not prostitute myself tonight, doing exactly as she commands. So! I said do you think I can believe this? That you will not kill Maydrian? For how can you ever let her go now? She would go straight to the convent.

"Then, dear Lord, Maydrian started screaming again and the Madame laughed when I started screaming to stop it. She says she will never let Maydrian go, that she would let her continue serving me in my new position and whether or not the dear old woman had a good day or a difficult one would depend entirely on my obedience." Panicked breaths came fast and hard. "She can't do this to me, she can't. I've got to save Maydrian! I've got to get out of here. I must escape—"

Mercedes pulled back, her hands holding Jade's shoulders for support. "Jade Terese, there is no escape. The house is full of her servants, posted at every door every hour of the day. There are women who have been here for years and have not found a way to escape."

"How can that be? I don't believe you!"

"You must. I beg you." In an impassioned whisper she said, "The Madame is a dangerous woman; a beast lives inside her. She would make you beg for death over and over before she'd ever grant you the mercy. I have seen this. Many, many times."

"She murders people?"

Mercedes paused, unwilling to discuss details. She had been here three years, and in that time she knew of four slaves who had disappeared, and two of the women. And only once was attention called to the hideousness of the Madame's evil: when one poor little girl leaped from the rooftop to escape the Madame's punishment.

Mercedes did not want this to happen to Jade.

Something alerted Jade to the magnitude of this implausible and yet all too horrifying reality. She reached a hand to Mercedes's face. Slowly her fingers found the tense lines of fear etched in Mercedes's forehead, the slight tremble of her lips. She felt Mercedes's pain, bought by her unnatural existence here. She felt the young woman's terrible longing to escape.

Unanswered desire. Mother Francesca said the unanswered desire is Satan's torment, the worst fate, and until she'd felt the magnitude of Mercedes's longing, she had not fully grasped what this had meant.

"What about you? How long have you been here?" "Three years now. And one month, five days."

The words hung heavily in the silence. "Were you brought here by force as well?" "Yes." Mercedes stood up suddenly.

Jade heard her trembling sigh. She had turned away, putting her back to where Jade sat as if to hide her emotions, while mentally debating what to say. "I was born on Saint Dominique," she began in a changed voice, one curiously devoid of emotion. For to court the emotions behind her words felt more dangerous than a descent to Madame's basement. "My family was wealthy. I grew up in a beautiful plantation house. We called it Belle Saint Bleu. It was, I'm afraid, the last place I knew happiness. ...

" 'Twas a large airy house that sat on a high cliff overlooking the sea. Sometimes if I close my eyes and remember, I can feel the salt breeze blowing through my bedroom windows, and I see a stretch of the crystal-blue sea and white sand beach, edged by row after row of sugarcane and the lush green jungle beyond.

"I was ten when my papa sent me to a convent in faraway Montparnasse in Paris. I had rarely been off our land, never once off the island, and after the long voyage, I found Paris so large and strange, noisy and filthy. I was not happy there. I was used to a lush green island, the beautiful sea, to going barefoot and riding my pony on the white sand beaches beneath a tropical sun. The other girls singled me out for my accent, and difference. I was so lonely there! I was allowed one letter home each month. Every faithful letter I sent begged my father to let me come home. He always promised he would send for me the next year. Then the next year and the next.

"I was thirteen when he died." "I'm sorry."

Mercedes shrugged unseen, her finger tracing a smooth line at the scrupulously clean windowsill where she stood. "I barely remember him now. I received a letter from my brother, who of course had inherited Belle Saint Bleu, and he too, promised to send for me soon. But within two years he had lost everything at the gaming tables, everything: our land, over a hundred slaves and the house, all the servants, even the house servants. I have not heard from him since. I sometimes wonder if he is dead or if he has just deserted me.

"Anyway, the Sisters had little choice but to put me to labor, and I was given a matter of months to choose between the holy vows or a position as a servant in a nearby house. I was ill suited to the vows; I am too sensitive to doubts, and I do not like the confines of such a cloistered and quite existence."

On the heels of a thoughtful pause, she explained: "I know that I was too in love with my dreams. Sometimes I wonder if God is ..." She felt the hot sting of tears and for a moment it shocked her.

Mercedes stood very still, confused, quite unable to continue, when Jade did it for her. "Punishing you now?" she asked quietly. "Punishing a young girl for enchanting dreams made of beautiful seas and white sand beaches, of a place where she could be loved and love again? Not the God of mercy and compassion."

Mercedes swung around to stare at Jade, struck by the poetry of her words. But what could she know? The young lady too, had been cloistered in a convent, and God knows, 'twas a world apart from a harlot's sinful existence.

Mercedes stepped to the fresh dressing water, where she bathed her hands to rid them of the dust from the sill. She thought of little Missy, her favorite, of the day she leaped from the rooftop to her death. A merciful God? A compassionate God?

"Well, I made my choice." Her smile disappeared as she dried her hands and folded the yellow towel neatly on the table. "It was a mistake. I was dismissed after less than a month of my new life."

"What happened?"

A pause followed a bitter sigh. "I was apparently not vigilant enough in warding off the Madame's husband's advances. She dismissed me and dispatched a letter of dismissal to the convent, and this prevented me from ever returning. So, foolishly, I decided to set off for the Mediterranean. It was my hope that I would find work until I could afford passage back to Saint Dominique. I planned to swallow my pride and beg the mercy of our good neighbors. I don't know what I was thinking, it seems so foolish and naive now: a young woman with no means or family to protect her. I was accosted in the seaside town of Biarritz and forced aboard a ship heading here to Orleans."

The voyage to New Orleans appeared regularly in Mercedes's nightmares. Those few times she referred to it in the light of day, she found that the years had mercifully reduced it to vague glimpses and pictures of a young girl's worst nightmare. She had awaked from a daze in this very room with a man's weight on top of her. She had screamed. The first descent to the Madame's basement had been her last. Life as she now knew it began the next day.

"What happened? How did you end up here?"

"The captain of the ship had false papers that claimed I was a tried and convicted criminal of France, sentenced to seven years of indentureship. The Madame bought my papers."

Mercedes never let herself reflect on all that had happened to her. She shared her history to make Jade see that it was impossible to escape and that the sooner she accepted this the easier it would be. Yet the weight and oppression of her story broke through her protective walls. She tried to recover, quickly wiping a lone tear sliding down her cheek.

Jade did not need sight to perceive the emotions gathering in the room, and guided only by the quiet sound of Mercedes's breaths, she rose and with an outstretched arm, she made her way to Mercedes's side at the window.

Mercedes turned to find Jade there.

The extreme wealth of Jade's compassion would not have been a surprise to anyone who knew her: it stretched to include all of humanity, from the uncouth drunkard lying in the mud to Mad King George himself and everyone between. Indeed, the Ursuline Sisters often watched Jade work miracles with it....

Mercedes was unfamiliar with the largeness of Jade's sympathies, but the very love and compassion she spoke of marked her face. One look into the sweetness there broke something deep inside her.

Jade held Mercedes in her slender arms, gently stroking her soft curly hair as she wept. Her thoughts turned this terrifying situation over a dozen times.