his wet nurse, a young black woman with large breasts and languid eyes, and a very young girl in charge of keeping the fans moving. The grandmother pulled back the mosquito netting, and Juliana leaned in to see the baby of the man she adored. She found him precious. She had not seen many infants with whom to compare him, but she would have sworn that there was no child more beautiful in all the world. Clad only in a diaper, he lay on his back, arms and legs outspread, deep in sleep. With a nod, Madame Odilia authorized Juliana to pick him up. She held him in her arms, and as she nuzzled his nearly bald head, saw his gummy smile, and touched fingers plump as little worms, the enormous black stone in her breast seemed to grow smaller, crumble, disappear. She kissed him all over the bare feet, the belly with the protruding navel, the neck wet with sweat and then a trickle of warm tears bathed her face and fell onto the baby. She was not weeping out of jealousy for something she would never have, but from a well of tenderness. The grandmother put Pierre back in the cradle and without a word motioned for Juliana to follow her. They crossed through the garden of orange trees and oleanders, away from the house to the beach, where a rowboat was waiting to take them to New Orleans. There they hurried through the streets of the city center and cut through the cemetery. Floods prevented burial beneath the ground, so the cemetery was a small city of mausoleums, some decorated with marble statues, others with wrought iron, cupolas, and bell towers. They walked a little farther to a street with tall, narrow houses, all identical, with a door in the center and a window on either side. These were called shotgun houses, because a gun fired at the front door passed through the house and out the back door without encountering any walls. Madame Odilia went in without knocking. An indescribable chaos of small children of various ages met their eyes, cared for by two women dressed in calico aprons. The house was crammed with fetishes, bottles of potions, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, wooden statues studded with nails, masks, and countless articles of the voodoo religion. There was a sweet, clinging odor like molasses. Madame Odilia greeted the women and went right on to one of the small rooms. Juliana followed and found herself facing a dark mulatto woman with long bones and the yellow eyes of a panther, her skin shiny with sweat, her hair pulled into fifty braids decorated with ribbons and colored beads, nursing a newborn child. This was the famous Marie Laveau, the pythoness who on Sunday danced with the slaves in Congo Square and in the sacred ceremonies in the forest fell into a trance and called forth the gods. “I brought her to you for you to tell me if this is the one,” said Madame Odilia. Marie Laveau stood and walked over to Juliana, the babe still at her breast. She was determined to have a child every year as long as her youth lasted, and she now had five. She put three fingers on Juliana’s forehead and looked deep into her eyes. Juliana felt a formidable energy, a surge that shook her from head to foot. A minute went by. “She is the one,” said Marie Laveau. “But she is white,” objected Madame Odilia. “I tell you she is the one,” the priestess repeated, and with that the interview was ended. The queen of Senegal took Juliana back to the dock once again through the cemetery and the Plaza de Armas where they rejoined the boatman, who had waited patiently, smoking his tobacco. He took a different route toward the bayou. Soon they were in the labyrinth of the swamp, with its channels, ponds, lakes, and islets. The absolute solitude of the countryside, the miasma rising from the mud, the sudden slashings of caimans, the cries of the birds, all contributed to an air of mystery and danger. Juliana remembered that she had not told anyone that she was leaving. Her sister and Nuria must be looking for her by now. It occurred to her that this woman might have evil intentions after all, she was Catherine’s mother but she immediately discarded that thought. The journey seemed very long to her, and the heat began to make her sleepy; she was thirsty, it was late afternoon, and the air was filled with mosquitoes. She did not dare ask where they were going. After a long time, as it began to grow dark, they pulled up on a bank. The boatman stayed with the boat, and Madame Odilia lighted a lantern, took Juliana’s hand, and led her through tall grass where not even a track marked a direction. “Take care not to step on a snake,” was all she said. They walked a long way, and finally the queen found what she was looking for: a small clearing identifiable by two tall trees streaming moss and marked with crosses. These were voodoo, not Christian, crosses that symbolized the intersection of two worlds, that of the living and that of the dead. Several masks and carved wood figures of African gods guarded the site. In the light of the lantern and the moon, the scene was terrifying. “There lies my daughter,” said Madame Odilia, pointing to the ground. Catherine Villars had died of puerperal fever five weeks before. Nothing had been able to save her the resources of medical science, Christian prayers, or the spells and herbs of African magic. Her mother and other women had wrapped her body, consumed by infection and hemorrhaging, and transported it to this sacred place in the swamp, where the dead girl would be temporarily buried until she was able to indicate the person destined to replace her. Catherine could not allow her son to fall into the hands of just any woman Jean Lafitte might choose, the queen of Senegal explained. Her own duty as Catherine’s mother was to help her in that task, and that was why she had concealed her death. Catherine was now in an intermediate region; she came and went between two worlds. Had Juliana not heard her footsteps in Lafitte’s house? Had she not seen her standing beside her bed at night? That odor of orange blossoms that floated on the island air was Catherine’s scent, who in her spiritual form was watching over little Pierre and searching for the right stepmother. Madame Odilia was surprised that Catherine had gone to the other side of the world to find Juliana, and she did not like the idea that she had chosen a white woman, but who was she to oppose her? From the region of the spirits, Catherine, better than anyone, could determine what was best, Marie Laveau had assured her. “When the right woman appears, I will know how to recognize her,” the priestess had promised. Madame Odilia had her first suspicion that it might be Juliana when she saw that she loved Jean Lafitte but was ready to give him up out of respect for Catherine. The second indication came when the girl felt pity for the fate of the slaves. Now she was satisfied, Madame Odilia said; her poor daughter could rest easy in heaven and be buried in the cemetery where the floodwaters would not carry her body out to sea. Madame had to repeat several details, because Juliana could not get the story into her head. She could not believe that this woman had hidden the truth from Jean for five weeks. How would she explain that now? Madame Odilia said that there was no reason her son-in-law had to know the truth. The exact date didn’t matter; she would tell him that Catherine had died the day before. “But Jean will demand to see the body!” Juliana contended. “That is not possible. Only we women may see the bodies of the dead.
It is our mission to bring children into the world and to send the dead off to theirs. Jean will have to accept that. After Catherine’s funeral, he will belong to you,“ the queen replied. ”Belong to m-me…“ Juliana stammered, confused. ”All that matters is my grandson Pierre. Lafitte is only the means Catherine used to lead you to her son. She and I will keep watch to see that you meet your obligation. To do that, you must stay close to the child’s father and keep him happy and tranquil.“
“Jean is not the kind of man who can be satisfied and tranquil; he is a corsair, an adventurer ”
“I will give you magic potions and secrets to keep him happy in bed, as I gave them to Catherine when she was twelve.”
“I am not that kind of…” Juliana defended herself, blushing. “Have no worry, you will be, though never as skillful as Catherine. You are a little old to learn, and you have many silly ideas in your head, but Jean will not notice the difference. Men are stupid; desire blinds them, they know very little about pleasure.”
“I cannot use courtesans’ tricks or magic potions, madame!”
“Do you love Jean or not, girl?”
“Yes,” Juliana admitted. “Then you will have to work at it. Leave everything in my hands. You will make him happy, and it is possible that you will be as well, but I warn you that you must think of Pierre as your own son, or you will have to deal with me. Is that clear?” I do not, dear readers, know how to convey the true magnitude of the unhappy Diego de la Vega’s reaction when he learned what had happened. The next boat to Cuba sailed from New Orleans in two days; he had bought the passages and had everything ready to fly out of Jean Lafitte’s hunting preserve, dragging Juliana with him. He was going to save his beloved after all. His soul had been reunited with his body, but then the whole apple cart turned over with the news that his rival was a widower. Diego threw himself at Juliana’s feet to convince her of the stupidity of what she was about to do. Well, that is a manner of speaking. He was on his feet, pacing with long strides, gesticulating, pulling his hair, yelling, while she watched him with a silly smile on her siren’s face. How can you convince a woman in love! Diego believed that in California, far from her pirate, the girl would come to her senses, and he would gain back the ground he had lost. Juliana would have to be a true simpleton to keep loving a man who trafficked in slaves. He was confident that in the end she would learn to appreciate a man like himself, as handsome and brave as Lafitte but much younger, honest, with a good heart and pure intentions, and he could offer her a very comfortable life without murdering innocents to steal their belongings. Diego was nearly perfect, and he adored her. Good God! What more could Juliana want? Nothing was enough for her. She was a bottomless sack. A few weeks in the heat of Barataria had been enough to wipe out at one stroke the advances he had achieved over five years of courting her. A wiser man than he would have come to realize that his darling had a fickle heart, but not Diego. Vanity clouded his eyes, as tends to be the case with ladies’ men like him. Isabel observed the events with awe. In the last forty-eight hours so many things had happened that she was
