Chapter Two Ree
Chapter Two
Ree
“You should be on your way, princess. Before your mother comes calling.”
Ree lay beside Anabelle in bed the next morning.
The sun shone over the Quarter’s rooftops and through the heavy, petal-embroidered satin drapes that covered the House of Flowers’s rosy stained-glass windows.
Church bells tolled in the distance, summoning the whole of New Orleans to its feet for the day.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of my mother too,” said Ree with a sigh, rolling over to face the fresco-painted ceiling. She studied the rounded backside of a pretty river-sprite bent over in a compromising position, blushing to the roots of her golden hair as some horned god had his way.
“Everyone is afraid of your mother.” Anabelle pranced from the bed, nimble as a gazelle, her pink heart-shaped necklace rising and falling in between the swell of her breasts, a totem of her favored loa, Erzulie, the sweet-tongued goddess of beauty and love.
Ree swatted Anabelle’s bare backside as she passed, then poured herself more mulberry wine from the flagon on the nightstand.
Anabelle’s bedchamber was on the House of Flowers’s third floor and was blessedly quiet, far removed from the sounds of pleasure and debauchery that filled the first and second levels all through the night, even to now.
The fireplace snapped with dying flame. Ree had hardly slept, haunted by the spirits’ riddle.
It seemed like a prophecy. But it was not like she could ask her friends what they thought—Anabelle, Marcel, and Fabrice had woken from their possession with no memory of the words spoken from their own lips, and Ree had kept the so-called Song of Three to herself.
Not until she could talk about it with her mother would she speak of it to anyone else.
Whenever Ree asked too many questions, Marie was fond of reciting an expression owed to her mentor, Sanite Dede, the prior Quarter Queen: There is safety in your secrets.
The tongue casts more than spells. The truth can be a more terrible curse than a lie.
“So, princess. If you spend another night here, what might the good people of New Orleans begin to think of Marie Laveau’s noble heir?”
Anabelle meant the question as a harmless tease, but Ree noticed the sourness to her voice, like the first signs of curdling in a cold cup of milk. “Since when have I ever cared what the good people of New Orleans think of me? My reputation is long past sullied.”
“It’s not your reputation that you’re truly protecting, now, is it?” Anabelle countered.
Ree pressed her lips into a thin line and said nothing.
It was true that lately she’d made herself more at home in the Maison des Fleurs’s vine-covered walls than in her own home on St. Ann Street that she shared with her mother.
She’d always felt content in the arms of pretty girls and boys, even if it meant running up a tab that she never had the intention of fully paying off.
But most recently, that home had started to look like one pretty face—Anabelle.
She found the young woman irresistible to a frustrating degree.
Anabelle shared Ree’s same penchant for mischief, but there was something hidden within its fringes.
A lingering sadness that compelled Ree closer.
Ree changed course. “Did you like our little game last night? We could always play again.”
Anabelle twirled a dark braid. “You always cheat. You Laveaus have a way of doing that.”
“I assure you I don’t need to cheat, ma chérie, to make you love me for one night.” Ree hesitated, then said, “And is that what you think of my family? Of me? That we cheat?”
Anabelle glanced away. “What else is it? You walk about this city as gens de couleur libre…” A hint of bitterness tinged those last words: free people of color.
“You Laveau women flitting as you like across the Quarter as free and golden as butterflies. And not because you’ve bought your freedom from the chains.
No, simply because they can’t even put you in them. ”
Quiet, Ree considered this. Had Henryk Broussard thought the same of her?
Was that why he’d offered to take her away from New Orleans, from her mother, all those years ago, to see who she might be without her status and her magic?
But you didn’t go, a small voice reminded her.
Because you are your mother’s daughter. A flash of regret flickered in her chest, there and gone, a quick sleight of hand.
Ree took a deep swig from her goblet, then another, though she knew she should be spending the morning at least attempting to sober up from the night before.
As Anabelle dressed, Ree couldn’t help but allow her gaze to linger over her naked backside, on the deep lash marks that trailed her flesh like roads emptied and long forgotten.
The door to Anabelle’s bedchamber flew open, breaking the lock.
Anabelle squeaked and darted behind her partition screen as Marie Laveau walked in, casting a dubious look about the pleasure chamber.
The air was heavily perfumed, sticky with candle wax and waning incense, the walls lined with hedonistic contraptions and paintings of storybook characters in lewd positions.
Ree flashed her mother a sour look. “Maman, you can’t just walk in wherever you like, you know.”
Judging from the sharp look aimed at Ree, her mother highly disagreed. “Come, we’ve business in the city.” Marie cast a look toward the silk partition where Anabelle was quickly pulling on her robe. “Out. Now.”
Half-robed and clutching her gown in her arms, Anabelle scampered from the room.
“Must you insist on ruining all of my fun, Mother?” Ree tossed off the silk sheets, stretching with all the leisure of a cat sunning itself. Marie flicked a finger, and a robe clothed Ree.
“For God’s sake, you heedless child, if you insist on lying with whores in the dark of night, at least have the decency to dress yourself by the light of day.”
“Oh, I forgot, you’re the great Marie Laveau, the ever-pious saint who never sinned a day in her life,” Ree retorted with a roll of her eyes. Although she’d only meant to tease, her mother fell silent, dark eyes studying her.
Sometimes, when her mother would stare at her with that faraway look, it was easy to imagine the person Marie Laveau had been before she’d become the Quarter Queen.
But there were times when Ree swore that her mother seemed…
bewildered to see her, as if she’d suddenly come face-to-face with her younger self.
A self she had no desire to ever, ever recall again.
Even Ree could admit she was Marie’s copy in nearly every way.
There were differences, of course, little tells.
If Marie Laveau the First was the sun, golden-skinned and dark eyes fiercely blazing, then Marie Laveau the Second was the night star.
She was darker than her mother in complexion, her brown skin more copper than gold, her eyes darker and more feline, her hair a smoky tangle of unruly curls and coils that shrouded her face in a black veil.
Marie turned on her heel and swept out the door, then paused, her profile crowned in the muted gold light of morning. “Oh, and Ree?”
“Yes, my queen?”
Her mother turned, and the look on her face stopped Ree cold. It was undeniably and completely full of old regret. For that one moment, it was as if she were staring at a different woman. And perhaps she was. “You needn’t worry, child,” said Marie, her voice strangely quiet. “I’ve sinned plenty.”
Ree followed her mother deeper into the madness of the Quarter day market.
The French Quarter had many names: the Vieux Carré to the Creoles, the Quartier to the Frenchmen and Cajuns, the hotbox to the slaves.
They had plenty of names for her mother too.
The Quarter Queen, yes. Priestess. And others not so benevolent.
Witch. Demoness. Traitor. Ree supposed it was that one that hurt her mother the most—traitor.
Because, according to her mother, it was also true.
Some were bold enough to shout these names at her as she passed, heckling from the safety of their balconies.
But Marie paid them no mind and continued past the moneyed men in tall hats who strolled the banquettes, the ladies on their arms who twirled their parasols coquettishly and flicked open their silk fans to gape at the Laveaus.
Though it was late winter, snow would not touch these parts, unlike the states farther upriver.
Today the sun was hot and gleaming, and the only sense of chill in the air was one of anticipation for the coming of Mardi Gras, which would soon see the whole of the city in debaucherous chaos.
Ree followed her mother beneath black ironwork terraces twisting like cobwebs overhead, where the creole bourgeoisie sipped mugs of steaming chicory coffee and picked at beignets dusted in sugar and jam, trading the day’s gossip.
Clapboard storefronts and marigold-colored shotgun homes slouched together like drunken friends.
Bartering echoed from a maze of merchant stalls, English and French running together into one jumbled note.
Any other day, Ree might have stopped and indulged herself in the market’s wonders: spices piled into silver trays, spools of silk and damask, crates of goods unknown.
As they walked side by side, Ree waited for the speech on civility and manners she knew was surely coming, but Marie remained silent.
“Rumor has it you were busy last night,” Ree finally said.
Marie cast her a sidelong look. “Apparently you were too. Tell me, daughter, do you ever grow tired of spending your nights with canal rats?”
“And you spent the night speaking with a demon. Perhaps I should be the one questioning you, Mother.”
Marie drew in a sharp breath. “Ree. Not everything is the game you make it out to be.”