Iron Lace #1

CHAPTER ELEVEN

J ules Guilbeau had a full set of God-given teeth and a thick head of silvering hair. He was broad-shouldered and svelte, and when Ti’ Boo was in the room, his affectionate dark-eyed gaze never left her for a moment. In the days since Aurore’s arrival, more than one woman had confided that Jules’s first wife had been sickly, a complainer who had depended on the goodwill of her maman and sisters to see that her chores were finished and her children tended. Ti’ Boo would better suit such a man as Jules, a man worthy of devotion and sacrifice.

Aurore had never fully understood devotion or sacrifice. Now, on Ti’ Boo’s wedding day, she understood it better. Life on Bayou Lafourche was more difficult than she had imagined. Even the youngest Boudreaux child understood that his work was important for the family’s survival.

As an honored guest, Aurore wasn’t expected to contribute to the well-ordered family system, but Ti’ Boo’s maman, Clothilde, a woman with her oldest daughter’s intelligence and instincts, had understood Aurore’s longing to be included. She had found plenty for Aurore to do, jobs that needed few skills other than those Aurore had come with.

Her needlework had been in high demand. She had sewn buttons and hems, embroidered rosettes on a nightdress for Ti’ Boo’s trousseau and initials on half a dozen handkerchiefs. Ti’ Boo, whose own needlework was extraordinary, had made her wedding dress, ivory silk with a scalloped lace yoke, from fabric sent weeks before by Aurore as her wedding gift to the bride. With Aurore in residence, the two women tucked, adjusted and gossiped unceasingly until the dress was perfect.

Some of the other preparations were less artistic. With dozens of wedding guests expected, the feast was to be lavish. Women had gathered every morning to help. At times it seemed that any woman who had ever passed within one hundred yards of the Boudreaux house was expected to come and lend a hand.

After the first day, Aurore had given up trying to remember names. She shelled and chopped nuts on the wide gallery with dark-haired, dark-eyed women who quickly got over the novelty of her presence and giggled when she winced at the squeals and squawks of the animals being slaughtered behind the house.

The men were just as busy. After the butchering, they came to dress the meat and to trade boasts and stories. Café noir, dark coffee freshly roasted and ground by Clothilde, flowed as freely as the muddy water of Bayou Lafourche. After twilight, home-brewed whiskey flowed, as well.

On the morning of Ti’ Boo’s wedding, the excitement reached a fever pitch. Outside, Valcour, with the help of his sons and brothers, roasted a dozen small pigs. In the kitchen at the back of the house, Clothilde supervised a work crew. Aurore had peeked in twice to see the progress. Gallons of shrimp, crabs and crawfish waited in barrels of cool water to be boiled with red pepper and herbs. Spicy jambalaya, a fragrant mixture of rice, vegetables and sausage, steamed in roasting pans.

Duck gumbo, made from a closely guarded recipe of Clothilde’s, bubbled enticingly in a cast-iron kettle.

The girls’ bedroom, tiny and crowded under ordinary circumstances, was a riot of colorful dresses and noise.

“You’re sure you didn’t break any thread when you were fixing the wedding dress?” Minette asked Aurore. “Very sure?”

“I don’t think so,” Aurore said. She shooed away a tiny cousin who was edging closer and closer to the dress in question.

“And there were no knots in the thread?”

“The dress looks beautiful. Perfect. Ti’ Boo will be the most beautiful bride ever. What could be the problem?” Aurore cocked her head in question.

All the girls in the room giggled in unison. “You don’t know?” Minette asked.

Aurore fell to the nearest bed, a simple moss-stuffed mattress, and tucked her feet beneath her. “Tell me.”

“If the thread for a wedding dress is broken, it means the marriage will end in sorrow. If there’s a knot, there will be trouble!”

“Then this marriage is sure to be happy.”

“Mine will be the same,” Minette confided. “I already have a serious suitor. Did you know?”

“Already?”

“I’m nearly sixteen. Maman was married at sixteen, Mémère at fifteen.”

“Only one suitor, then? And you want to marry him?”

“ Mais non! After he comes to the house, I sweep it right away, to sweep away his love.”

Aurore tried not to smile. “And does that work?”

“I think so, yes. He comes less often now.”

“He comes less often,” Ti’ Boo said, entering the room to chase out all the younger children, “because you are so rude to him.”

“That, too,” Minette agreed cheerfully.

“Do you love another man?” Aurore asked. “Is that why you’re rude?”

“I’ve seen the face of my husband-to-be in our well. Now I have only to wait for him to court me.”

“In the well?”

“I don’t think you’re learning anything you need to know in New Orleans,” Minette said.

“If you look in a well at noon, and you’re lucky,” Ti’ Boo explained, “you’ll see the face of your intended.”

“Did you?”

“Me, I saw nothing, and when I leaned over to search harder, I nearly fell in.”

“It’s almost noon!” Minette clapped her hands. “Aurore must try.”

“But I don’t want to get married,” Aurore said. Silence fell—an extraordinary event in the Boudreaux household.

Aurore wondered how she could explain. She had never seen a happy marriage, except, perhaps, in her brief sojourn here. By society’s standards, Ti’ Boo’s parents were poor, and despite Clothilde’s poor health, they both worked unceasingly. But they were seldom cross with their children or each other, and when they had a few minutes that didn’t have to be parceled out to someone or something else, they spent it together. Aurore had seen them touch hands when passing; she had heard their contented murmurs late at night.

In contrast, there was the marriage of her own parents. It had ceased to resemble a marriage many years ago. “I don’t think of marriage as you do,” she tried to explain. “Look what it did to my mother.”

Ti’ Boo sat on the bed beside her and took Aurore’s hand. “I haven’t asked before, because I was afraid it would make you sad. Is Madame Le Danois any better?”

Aurore considered a lie, but the truth was a burden better shared. “I was allowed to see her six months ago. She sat at the window and murmured lists of names, like a new mother choosing what to call her baby. Boys’ names, of course.”

Ti’ Boo’s hand tightened spasmodically around Aurore’s. “And you think marriage did this to her?”

“She worked so hard to please my father and hers. I don’t think she ever thought about what she wanted, except on the night of the hurricane. After that, she blamed herself for Grand-père ’s death. His name is prominent on the list she repeats.”

“But she pleaded with him to leave Krantz’s.”

“Yes. I remember.” Aurore stroked Ti’ Boo’s hand. She also remembered the terrible, ceaseless screaming of the wind, the miscarriage her mother had suffered that night, the horror of learning that her grandfather had been killed in the collapse of the cottage he had believed to be safe. “I didn’t come to C?te Boudreaux to convince you not to get married. But there’s no hope I could marry for love. How could I tell if a man wanted me, and not my money or my name?”

She was afraid to speak a worse possibility out loud. What if she mistakenly married a man like her father, a man who viewed women as ornaments, or broodmares? What if she ended up in a locked hospital room, endlessly repeating the names of babies she hadn’t been able to bring into the world alive?

“Ro-Ro, do you think I marry for love?” Ti’ Boo said. “I make marriage with Jules to care for his children and give birth to my own. I marry him to have a home that’s mine.”

“You marry him to have a man to warm your bed,” Minette said. “And because he makes you laugh.”

“You’re too young to speak of such things!”

“Do you love him, Ti’ Boo?” Aurore asked.

“I won’t mind growing old with him.”

Minette rolled her eyes. “He’ll grow old before you.”

Ti’ Boo jumped to her feet and started after her sister. “I’ll grow old sitting here listening to your chatter. Enough!”

Aurore didn’t have much time to think about their conversation as the day progressed. She spent the rest of the morning on the gallery, helping Ti’ Boo’s weeping nainaine put the finishing touches on the traditional paper flowers for the church. In the early afternoon, Aurore arranged Ti’ Boo’s hair. The task had fallen to her after a great deal of consultation. It was decided that only Ro-Ro would know the latest styles and have the good taste not to make Ti’ Boo look like a china doll.

While Ti’ Boo sat on a chair before her, Aurore brushed the shining mass of waves, silky and soft from a rainwater wash the night before. She parted it in the middle, then pushed it forward before she doubled it back to the crown and twisted it into a perfect Psyche knot. Carefully she freed tiny wisps from the sides and curled them around her fingers.

“Jules is a good man,” Ti’ Boo said, as if their conversation of the morning had never been interrupted. “I want children of my own, and I love his children already.”

“They’ll be very lucky to have you as their maman.”

“Don’t you want children, Ro-Ro?”

Aurore did want children. But she was afraid she knew the choices she faced. A loveless marriage and much-loved children, or no marriage and no children at all. She told Ti’ Boo something she had never told anyone. “I don’t know, but if I ever do have children, I’ll be like your mother, not mine. I’ll give them my life. I won’t let anything separate us. Not illness or misfortune. Nothing. Not ever.”

Ti’ Boo took Aurore’s hand and placed it against her cheek. “You’ll be a good mother, too.”

When it seemed as if the day had stretched to the breaking point, Clothilde arrived to tell Ti’ Boo it was time to dress. Like Ti’ Boo’s nainaine, Clothilde wept, and like other Acadian mothers before her, she threatened not to attend the wedding because it would be too sad to witness. Aurore wondered if Acadian mothers were unhappy because they were losing their daughters or because they knew what awaited them in their married lives.

Clothilde threatened, but in the end she dressed in her Sunday best and climbed into the buggy. Ti’ Boo, resplendent in her dress and long veil, with her mother and father beside her, took the long ride to the church at the head of a lengthy procession. Aurore, in pale green batiste and a discreetly feathered hat, was escorted by a Boudreaux aunt and uncle.

The small church was lit by gentle, lingering sunshine. Despite a tradition that real flowers were a show of vanity, the paper flowers had been supplemented with bright blossoms from family gardens. Ti’ Boo walked down the aisle to the smiles and sobs of the people who loved her best, and Aurore shed her own sentimental tears.

There were no tears after the last words were said. Ti’ Boo and a formal Jules, dressed in black, climbed into his buggy to lead the race back home. The Boudreaux and Guilbeau men, who had been models of propriety, raucously fired shotguns into the air.

At home, all unnecessary furniture had been stacked against the wall to make space on the floor for the bal de noce, the traditional wedding dance that was to begin later in the evening. Tables had been set under the trees for the feast, and honored matrons took their places in line to serve the wedding guests.

Aurore wasn’t hungry. Throughout the day she had sampled tidbits, until her appetite was gone. Since the meal was to be served one sitting at a time, she was happy to wait.

To the mournful cadences of a lone fiddler, she stepped out on the gallery. As she had promised her father, the Boudreaux had been as strict with her as with their own daughters. She had been watched and kept from any compromising behaviors. Her virtue was assured; at home she would resume the life of a New Orleans debutante, and nothing on the surface would be changed.

But she was changed. The days at Ti’ Boo’s house had awakened memories of childhood summers on the Gulf, of warm, scented afternoons at the Krantz’s Place, when her mother had sat on a cottage gallery and watched her play with the other summering children. She had recalled what it felt like to be wanted, to be part of a community of people who cared whether she was happy.

No one watched her now. Clothilde was splendidly occupied as overseer of the feast, and Ti’ Boo’s aunts were in the serving line. Holding her skirt with one hand and her hat with the other, she crossed the buggy-lined road to stroll along the levee.

Geese flew across the twilight sky, and on the opposite bank of the bayou a heron skimmed the water, searching for its final meal of the day. From somewhere up the bayou she heard the whistle of a steamboat. She would start her journey home in the morning. Ti’ Boo and her new husband would spend tonight at an aunt’s, and tomorrow they would lay paper flowers on the graves of their closest departed relatives before returning to Jules’s home. Ti’ Boo would begin her new life as Aurore returned to her old one.

She was so immersed in that thought that she came within yards of a solitary figure before she realized she was no longer alone. “Mam’selle Le Danois.” The man swept off his straw hat, and gave a little bow. With some relief, she recognized étienne Terrebonne.

“étienne.” She glanced behind her and saw just how far she had strayed. “Clothilde will be furious with me for coming out here alone.”

“You’re not alone anymore.”

“If she knew that, she’d be even more furious.”

“Then better run back home before she finds out.”

She laughed. “No, I think I’m safe. She’s well occupied for the moment. Ti’ Boo was married today. Did you know?”

“I’ll be at the bal de noce. I’m staying overnight at their neighbor’s house to build a new room.”

“Then you’re a carpenter?”

“And a trapper, a fisherman, a moss picker. An Acadian. Have you learned what that means?”

“It means hard work.” She crossed her arms and stood beside him to stare at the bayou. Something more than surprise flickered inside her. She was aware of the differences that separated them, but there was also an awareness of sim ilarities unexplored. She could almost believe he knew what it felt like to yearn for what he’d never had. She wondered at her own sentimentality. étienne was a stranger, one she wouldn’t see again after tonight.

“Your life in New Orleans must be very different,” he said.

“It’s boring in comparison. Much more formal. Both more and less are expected.”

“And you don’t always want to do what’s expected?”

“Oh, I’m more rebellious than you can guess. I’m not supposed to be here at all. I’m supposed to be at home, dutifully searching for a husband. If my father knew I had come to Ti’ Boo’s wedding…”

“Your father didn’t approve?”

“There’s little about me he approves of.”

“Then we have that in common.”

She turned so she could see him. “Do we? But you work with your father, don’t you?”

“Faustin Terrebonne is not my father, not really.”

His profile was strongly masculine, a bold statement against the orange streaked sky. She admired the hook of his nose, the carefully etched width of his lips. His hair curled back from his ears, emphasizing the proud set of his head. “Then who is your father?”

“My real name is étienne Lafont. I was born in Caminadaville, on Chénière Caminada. Do you know it?”

Her pulse quickened. The coincidence was extraordinary. “Better than you might think. I was on Grand Isle when the hurricane that destroyed the chénière struck the coast.”

“Grand Isle wasn’t hit so hard.”

She couldn’t let him make light of what she had suffered. “Maybe not. But if Ti’ Boo’s uncle hadn’t rescued my mother and me and taken us to his home, I would have died, too.”

He didn’t look at her. “Nearly a thousand died on the chénière. All my family was killed. I was washed away by the wave that destroyed our house, and thrown against the remains of someone’s skiff. I clung to it until the worst of the storm died. Somehow I managed to heave myself onto what was left of it before I passed out. When I regained consciousness, I was in a cabin in the swamps. Faustin had been taking supplies to the few survivors. Apparently the skiff washed into the marsh. He found me four days after the hurricane ended.”

“God spared you for something, étienne.”

“That’s what Zelma, Faustin’s wife, always said. I caught a fever before I could recover and hovered near death for weeks. When I regained consciousness, I learned I was an orphan. Zelma swore that I had been delivered to her because she had never been able to have children of her own. She nursed me back to health. She was truly a second mother to me.”

“Was, étienne?”

“She died at Eastertime.”

Aurore hugged herself for warmth. She felt bonded to him by the horror they had shared. “But Faustin isn’t a father to you?”

“He’s an old man. His life has been a bitter disappointment. Is your father disappointed by life, too? Or is he only strict and old-fashioned?”

“My father has everything, but nothing he ever wanted. He was nearly killed in the hurricane himself. He was out sailing when it blew in, but he found shelter on the chénière, in a church presbytery. He never speaks of it, but even now, when he hears the tolling of a bell, he turns pale.”

étienne was silent. She was silent, too, thinking of that time. “I should get back to the house,” she said at last.

“Will you save a dance for me?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

She turned and started back. Halfway there, she looked over her shoulder. étienne was still staring at the bayou.

Aurore ate dinner sandwiched between two of Ti’ Boo’s cousins, who made sure she tried a bit of this and that until the laces on her corset nearly popped. Afterward, the fiddler fell silent and everyone gathered around as an uncle of Valcour’s gave the adresse aux mariés, a kindly lecture on the meaning of marriage. There were sly jokes about Jules’s age, and the fact that by now he could give the address himself, but no one seemed to doubt that Ti’ Boo had made an excellent match.

The music started again. This time the fiddler, who had moved inside, was joined by his brother. A third man played the accordion. Fiddles were common, but an accordion, an instrument that could coax poignant emotion from a mere dance tune, was thought to be a miracle.

Like any well-bred girl of her time, Aurore had been introduced to all the classics. She could play some of the Chopin études and more than half of Mendelssohn’s “Songs without Words” on her father’s Steinway, shipped from New York the very week that Tante Lydia decided her musical education should begin. But this music was as different from the classics as it was from the whistles, horns and cigar-box fiddles of the spasm bands that sometimes performed in front of New Orleans’s theaters and saloons.

The fiddlers sawed at the heartstrings of their audience as surely as they sawed at their instruments. And the man on the accordion, a handsome young rake with sorrowful eyes, wailed haunting French verses that told of centuries of oppression, of loved ones left behind and families forever parted by the Acadian exile from Nova Scotia.

“Do you like our songs?”

Aurore turned to see that étienne was standing behind her. “I hope they won’t all be so sad.”

“Not all. But as a people we choose not to forget the wrongs that were done us.”

He sounded so serious that she had to question him. “Why not? What good can it do for you to remain in the past?”

“The past has made us strong. We came to the bayous with nothing, and now they belong to us. The Germans, the Spanish, the Americans, all came to make the bayous theirs, and soon we turned them into Acadians.”

“So you owe your strength to misfortune? You as a person must be stronger than most, étienne.”

“Stronger?” He shrugged. “More determined? Oui. ”

“Determined to do what?”

“Find my own place in the world.”

She considered that, along with the unique character of their conversation. Certainly, étienne’s past must have affected his need to establish himself in the world, but she was surprised he had admitted as much out loud. In her experience, men seldom admitted to having feelings at all.

“Where will that place be?” she asked.

“Not here.”

She wondered why, but before she could find out, she saw that Minette was signaling from across the room. She realized that talking to étienne where the men were congregating must be a breach of etiquette.

She skirted the edges of what was now a dance floor, arriving on the other side just in time for the wedding march. Ti’ Boo, who appeared flustered but determined, walked around and around the room, her hand clasped in that of her new husband’s. The family followed close behind. When the march ended, the little band swung into a waltz. The floor cleared quickly, and Ti’ Boo and Jules were left to dance alone.

“It’s been a perfect wedding,” Minette said, coming to stand beside Aurore. “But mine will be more perfect.”

Aurore watched Ti’ Boo whirl around the floor, clasped closely to Jules’s chest. Ti’ Boo had always seemed older than her years, and now, despite the ten years that separated her from Jules, she looked every bit his equal. He gazed fondly down at her, and Aurore felt relief, or something very much like it, fill her. “I think they’ll be happy,” she said. “He cares for her.”

“I think he always has. I think he wanted to marry Ti’ Boo when he was a young man, but he was too old for her, and he would have had to wait too many years to win my papa’s approval.”

“Really?”

Minette giggled; the sound was slightly higher-pitched than silver striking crystal. “Does it matter?”

“Oh, you see romance everywhere.”

“I saw you talking to étienne Terrebonne. I’ve discovered he has a reputation.”

“Does he?”

“He’s a fighter. They say there’s no man for a hundred miles or more who can fight like étienne.”

Aurore tried to determine from Minette’s tone whether this was considered a good thing. Not too many years had passed since hot-blooded New Orleans gentlemen had routinely dueled for honor under the massive live oaks of what was now City Park. She wondered if étienne fought for honor, too. Perhaps it was a way to make up for what was lacking in his life.

“They say he cut off a man’s ear when the man insulted his father,” Minette said.

“I don’t believe it.” Aurore looked across the room and found étienne. He was standing among some of the other men, but there was a space surrounding him, out of either respect or fear; she couldn’t be sure which. “He seems kind to me.” She searched for a better word. “Understanding.”

“I’ll tell you something else. He has an education, even though he comes from the back of Lafourche. His mother, she was taught by the nuns in Donaldsonville, and then she was a teacher, too, before she married. It’s said she taught him everything she knew, but only when his father was gone from home or asleep from too much whiskey. Faustin doesn’t believe a man should read.”

“That seems a pity.”

“étienne’s the most handsome man here, don’t you think?”

Aurore found that difficult to answer. Handsome was inaccurate. Some of the other men had features that were more refined, more purely French. But did she measure étienne by those standards, or by the ones that gave her own eyes pleasure? “He’s easy to look at,” she said.

“I think he could hold a woman and make her feel passion.”

“It wasn’t étienne’s face you saw in the well, was it?”

“ Mais non. Sadly not.” Minette didn’t sound sad at all. She sounded young and thoroughly enchanted with herself. Aurore felt a surge of affection. “Then show me your young man.”

Aurore murmured her approval when Minette finally pointed out the youth she believed would be her intended. Then she commiserated when couples began to join Ti’ Boo and Jules in their waltz and Minette’s secret love asked another girl to dance. Finally she watched as Minette was swept away in the arms of an uncle.

“May I have this waltz?”

She had been so busy soothing Minette that she was surprised to find that étienne was standing before her. “I’m not sure I dance exactly the way you do,” she warned him. “The music and the step are a little different.”

“You’ll learn quickly.”

She took his hand. His was rough, steady and warm, the hand of a man who does hard labor and loses nothing of his self-respect along the way. He held her at a proper distance and began to waltz her slowly around the room. His hand was even warmer at her waist, and his widespread fingers rested comfortably against her hip. Face-to-face with him, she could analyze exactly what it was about him that she found most appealing. She decided it was his eyes. They were dark, like a winter night when even the occasional glimmer of starlight is an excuse for hope.

“Did you really cut off a man’s ear?” she asked.

étienne smiled at her. She noted that something inside her seemed connected to his smile. Something had responded, and pleasantly. “So you’ve already learned how stories can be augmented here,” he said.

“Was that one…augmented?”

“Ah, oui. It was only part of an ear.”

She stumbled, but caught herself. “Which part?”

“The part he didn’t need. I left the part he hears with.”

Despite herself, she laughed. “May I ask why?”

“Why I did it? Or why I didn’t carve off more?”

The music ended. They stood together, waiting for the next song. Since the waltz had begun with Ti’ Boo and Jules on the floor alone, they had not yet had an entire dance. “Why do you fight at all? Aren’t there better ways to settle matters?”

“Some men fight for lack of anything better to do. Some fight to avenge old wrongs. Some, new ones.”

“And you?”

“All and none.”

She wondered if she should be afraid of this man. He had risked his own life to save her, but he was also a man too comfortable with violence. He was watching her, as if aware of her thoughts. His gaze was unflinching, but she knew, without understanding how, that he expected her to turn away. She stood her ground. “Well, you’re not fighting now.”

The music began again, a song that was faster-paced and humorous. In a moment she was in étienne’s arms once more and they were whirling around the floor in a polka. She had to concentrate on her feet. By the time she had mastered the step, the dance had ended. He returned her to the appropriate side of the room and made a polite bow. “Thank you,” she said.

“Pas de quoi.” He started to leave.

“étienne?”

He turned back.

“I hope you find everything you’re looking for.”

He seemed surprised. “And you.”

Aurore was swept up for the next dance by an elderly Guilbeau cousin, and then by an endless line of young and old men who wanted the opportunity to dance with Ti’ Boo’s Creole ami. Her older partners instructed her in the traditional Acadian contredanses, and she two-stepped with the younger. She passed Ti’ Boo time and time again. Ti’ Boo danced with every man on the bayou, and Minette danced with nearly as many.

As the evening wore on, she watched for étienne. Once she saw him partnering a young woman in a square dance, but the rest of the time she didn’t see him in the room.

During a temporary lull in the music, she was sipping punch and gazing discreetly through the crowd when Minette approached her. “It’s too exciting,” Minette whispered. “There’s going to be a fight behind the house. Beside the stables.”

“What is anybody doing out there this time of night?”

“Fighting the roosters.”

Aurore knew cockfighting was common in the area. Indeed, it was common enough in New Orleans, despite efforts to put a halt to it. Albert, Ti’ Boo’s youngest brother, had taken her to the barn to see Valcour’s prize bird, a shiny-feathered red rooster who had valiantly attacked the sides of his cage when Aurore leaned over to peer at him. But she hadn’t known that a fight would be acceptable entertainment at a wedding dance.

“Is it just roosters that are going to fight, or people?” she asked.

“Most certainly people. And I know how we can see it.”

Aurore wasn’t sure she wanted to. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure she wanted to miss something so delightfully forbidden. Tomorrow she would be home again, and life wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining.

“I will tell Maman that we’re going to help Tante Grace in the kitchen, and we will, for a little while.” Minette measured an inch with her thumb and forefinger. “Then we’ll tell Tante Grace that we are taking the last of the cakes back to the house, and we will…but we’ll store them by the cistern first, until we’ve seen the fight.”

“And no one will suspect?”

“Not even if they talk to each other about it. We will have done exactly what we said, with just a little lie in the middle.”

Aurore knew that Clothilde would be loudly unhappy if she discovered what was planned. But Minette added a further enticement.

“I think étienne Terrebonne will fight,” she whispered, so softly that Aurore had to strain to hear her. “There is a man outside who once vowed to punish étienne’s father for a slight. Faustin isn’t here, but his son is.”

“How do you know all this?”

Minette’s eyes widened. “Me, I listen.”

Minette’s plan went exactly as described. Fifteen minutes later, Aurore found herself skulking quietly through the cool evening mist toward the stable where the horses and the mule were kept. The cakes, lavishly iced and studded with pecans, were safely hidden on a covered ledge of the cistern.

The cockfight was easy to find. There was flickering light from a campfire to guide their way, along with muffled shouts and curses. Minette had agreed that they wouldn’t get close enough to be seen. Instead, they would stay in the shadows, behind the willows that provided shade for the stableyard.

They picked their way silently through the darkness until they had moved as close as they dared. From this distance they could make out the faces nearest the flames. The crowd was small, and most of the men were unfamiliar to Aurore. No more than ten stood around a sawdust-layered ring to watch the birds fight. Their stance was relaxed, and their cheers were good-natured. If the birds hadn’t been slaughtering each other in the midst of them, Aurore would have thought it was just another example of Acadian men passing a good time together.

She found étienne at the edge of the circle, standing slightly apart from the others. He seemed uninterested in the spectacle in front of him, but Aurore imagined that he, like the others, had wagered on the outcome of the fight. She swallowed as the shrieking of the birds grew louder, then squeezed her eyes shut as one of the men stepped forward to lift a dying bird from the ground and hold it up for the others to see.

There were more cheers than curses now; apparently most of the men knew how to judge a winner. But one man wasn’t pleased that his bird had lost. He took off his hat and beat it against his leg. In the moonlight, his bald head gleamed like polished marble as he stepped forward to grab the rooster from the man’s hands and fling it into the surrounding crowd.

The rooster landed at étienne’s feet.

“Ah, Vic. Quoi y’a? You still haven’t learned to lose?” étienne asked. “ ?a c’est malheureux. You lose so often, too.”

The men grew silent. Aurore judged that étienne was only a few years older than she, but here on Lafourche he was considered a man. No one would rise to his defense.

“What’s you doing here, ’Tienne?” Vic asked. He was a tall man, but not as tall as étienne. As he moved closer, his shadow fell across étienne’s feet. “This is a sport for Acadians. You…you was found in the marshes, where the loup-garou prowls. And your papa, he’s another loup-garou. He plows his land by day, and at night he does his hoodoo when the moon is full, like tonight. That’s why he’s not here. Either that, or him, he’s afraid to come, afraid of me!”

étienne stood nonchalantly as Vic beat his chest in a parody of victory. “My papa is afraid he’ll hurt you, Vic,” he said, when Vic had finished. “Like he did last time. You can’t risk more scars, can you? Too many scars and there won’t be any real skin holding you together.”

The men laughed. Vic visibly bristled. “You afraid like your papa, ’Tienne?” He sent his hat sailing to the edge of the ring where the roosters had fought. “Me, I’m a man. And you?” He pulled a large handkerchief out of his pocket and waved it in étienne’s face.

“Grand rond!” one of the men shouted.

“What’s going on?” Aurore whispered as the men circled étienne and Vic. She turned. Minette looked as properly awed as a Creole maiden at her first opera.

“It’s the bataille au mouchoir. They each have to hold a corner of the handkerchief and fight until one of them drops it.”

As a child, Aurore had played far less deadly games with handkerchiefs. “How can they fight and hold it, too?”

“They’ll fight with knives.”

“Knives!”

“Shhhh…”

Aurore stepped forward, forgetful now that she was supposed to remain in the shadows. She couldn’t believe that the men would really use such a small excuse to hack each other to bits. But as she watched, metal flashed in the firelight. Crouching in a fighter’s stance, étienne grabbed a corner of the handkerchief with his left hand. He flipped his knife into the air and gripped the handle with a flourish as it fell toward the earth.

“I’m ready, mon ami, ” he said.

Aurore wanted to scream. Nothing had ever seemed more absurd. A man called another a name, and suddenly they were about to kill each other. The cockfight had been civilized by comparison. The cocks had been bred for nothing less.

Vic seemed to reconsider; then, without warning, he shifted his weight and sprang. étienne was ready. He twisted and easily dodged the lunge. As Vic fought to regain his footing, étienne pricked his shoulder. “You bleed like a pig in a boucherie! ”

“He could have injured him more.” Minette tried to pull Aurore back into the shadows, but Aurore refused to move. “He’s trying not to kill him.”

Aurore was hardly reassured. Even if what Minette said was true, Vic seemed to have no such reservations. Clearly, he was bent on murder. He lunged again, and again étienne dodged. This time he gouged Vic’s forearm. “Be careful you don’t end up on a spit like that pig,” étienne said.

Vic spun and came at étienne from a different angle. As if he had easily anticipated this new attack, étienne blocked Vic’s arm with his own. Then, with his knife aimed at Vic’s chest, he drove it home, slashing off the buttons of Vic’s shirt. With an angry cry, Vic fell against him, but each time he tried to wound étienne, étienne was somewhere else. étienne took a swipe at Vic’s sleeve, and the fabric hung by threads. He took another, and blood flowed from a long cut along Vic’s neck.

Vic screamed in fury and lunged again, this time catching étienne’s arm. Cloth ripped, but no blood appeared. Aurore covered her mouth in horror.

étienne stepped to one side, as if to avoid another clash with Vic’s knife. In triumph, Vic bent toward him, his knife raised, but étienne easily dodged his blow. This time Vic fell to the ground, still clutching the handkerchief’s corner, and his knife flew out of his hand. He rolled onto his back and saw that étienne was leaning over him, his knife poised over his heart.

étienne crouched low, bringing the knife closer and closer. Vic stared his hatred at étienne, but he didn’t drop the handkerchief.

étienne drew the blade across the cloth, severing the handkerchief from end to end, so that each man was left holding a piece. “You have courage, Vic. I don’t kill a brave man.”

There was a murmur from the circle. Heads nodded; one man gave a weak cheer. Vic looked at the cloth in his hand, then at étienne’s face. Slowly he stuffed what was left of his handkerchief back in his pocket.

étienne straightened and looked directly at Aurore, who had continued to stand in plain view. He smiled a little and gave a slight bow, but even from a distance, even with only the flickering firelight to illuminate his face, she knew he felt no triumph.