by Beth White
“Perhaps it’s time she learned what you and Jean Cavalier have done for her. It was he who broke you out of prison, and when he told me how you were treated there—”
“And you, Father. We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been willing to listen to Jean.”
“Pssh. Child, I wouldn’t sleep at night knowing I’d left two orphans behind to face that nightmare in the Cévennes—and all of it in the name of religion. It’s my hope to create a climate here where all Christians, whether Catholic or Reformed or something in between, will be free to worship together.” His voice rose above the roar of the surf, and he sounded stronger than she’d heard him in days.
“A noble dream, Father.” She patted the trembling hand on her arm. “But I would not speak it within the hearing of Captain Lanier—nor anyone else in authority. We are yet a Catholic state, as long as Louis is on the throne.”
“His Majesty thinks to keep the faith pure.” Father Mathieu shook his head. “But such excesses of materialism—and downright barbarism—I have never seen. How can it be right to murder one’s countrymen just because their interpretation of Scripture does not line up with that of the Pope? And how is it right to live in gilded halls which house at least one mistress and numbers of illegitimate children, when innocents like you and your sister are deprived of parents and driven out of their homes?”
“Please, Father, have a care!” Geneviève stopped, clutching the priest’s arm. They had reached the shore and were within earshot of soldiers and sailors milling about, hoisting kegs and boxes and trunks onto their shoulders, splashing toward the boats.
He gave her a sheepish smile. “You are right, of course. Besides, the sermon is wasted on the righteous. I shall save it for the audience who needs it.” At her alarmed gasp, he laughed. “Don’t worry, I can be subtle when necessary.”
Geneviève eyed him with mock severity. “Wise as a serpent, hmm?”
“Quite.” He drew her toward an officer supervising the removal of luggage from the cart. “Pardon, m’sieur, can you advise us as to the procedure for boarding?”
The officer turned and removed his hat to wipe his forehead, revealing a curly mop of red hair. Geneviève recognized the young officer from the dining hall.
He bowed. “Good morning, Father, mademoiselle.” Rising, he gestured toward the swarm of activity surrounding the lading process. “As you can see, we are not quite ready for boarding, but your punctuality is commendable.” His gaze found Geneviève’s. “And how did you ladies pass the night? I hope you fared well on your first day in the New World.”
“Tolerably,” she said without much enthusiasm. The scuttling nighttime noises had been different from, but no less disconcerting than, that of the rats which infested the Pélican. And Aimée’s nightmare couldn’t be mentioned. “I must thank you again for your men’s willingness to sacrifice their beds in our favor.”
“It is no sacrifice when one reflects that those beds may soon be jointly warmed.” His sly tone was mitigated by a twinkle in the greenish eyes. “Within the bonds of matrimony, that is, begging your pardon, Father.”
Father Mathieu laughed. “No offense taken, my son. I’m sure you young men have been looking forward to the company of our gentle beauties.”
“And the reality far exceeds the hope. But we have not been properly introduced.” The officer bowed once more, this time with a flourish of his plumed hat. “I am Aide-Major Julien Dufresne, at your service.”
Geneviève dipped a curtsey. “I am Geneviève Gaillain. This is Father Mathieu.”
Dufresne took her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Mademoiselle, I am enchanted.” His gaze flicked over her shoulder as he rose. “One of these young ladies is your sister, if I’m not mistaken. I see the familial resemblance.”
Geneviève turned and found Aimée and the other three girls clustered in a tittering knot a few paces away. “Yes, come here, girls. I wish you to meet Aide-Major Dufresne.”
All four spilled forward and introduced themselves with a rush of giggles and curtsies.
“Barbe Savarit!”
“Ysabeau Bonnet—bon jour, m’sieur.”
“Élisabeth le Pinteaux.” Poor Élisabeth, shy and still weak from the fever, looked as if she might faint.
Aimée took the girl’s arm and gave a regal nod. “We are pleased to make your acquaintance, m’sieur. I am Aimée Gaillain.”
Dufresne kissed each girl’s hand in turn. “Enchanted,” he murmured, lingering over Aimée’s slim fingers. He released her only when she gave an impatient tug. With a small smile, Dufresne addressed the priest. “If you will escort your fair charges to the end of the pier, we shall begin boarding as soon as all have arrived.” He bowed, then returned to his duties without a backward glance.
Sensing trouble, Geneviève glanced at her sister.
Clearly piqued, Aimée shrugged. “Come, girls, let us watch to make sure these oafs don’t drop our baggage into the ocean.” Lifting her skirts, she flounced toward the activity near the gangplank.
The other three girls hurried after her, leaving Geneviève to follow on the arm of the priest. Oafs? From whence had her common-born little sister arrived at the notion that she was better than anyone else, particularly men who were doing her a service? Her assumption of Aimée’s naïveté might be a bit over-hopeful. Father Mathieu would have his work cut out for him, keeping those four on a leash.
3
The sixty-foot, seven-ton barque Tristan used for transporting supplies upriver fought the current despite the best efforts of the oarsmen to set her course. It was going to be a long trip, especially if the women kept rocking the boat off-balance. He regretted his capitulation to Marc-Antoine.
For the last two hours he’d kept an eye out for alligators slumbering in the marshes alongshore. He could just imagine the uproar if one of his passengers spied one of the slippery monsters gliding along in the shallows.
Glancing over his shoulder, he caught the wide-eyed gaze of Mademoiselle Geneviève. Her lips trembled upward at the corners, though her face looked pinched. He hoped she wasn’t going to succumb to the seasickness that often followed a sudden shift in motion after a long voyage.
Leaving the wheel to one of his mates, he jumped over piles of cable and rigging and made his way to the stern, where the seven women and the priest sat holding on to their benches as if a typhoon might sweep them overboard at any moment.
“I trust you are still comfortable,” he said, addressing the elder Mademoiselle Gaillain. He couldn’t seem to avoid looking at her first. She was not as staggeringly lovely as her sister, but despite her pallor, the intelligence and humor in her expression drew his gaze.
She touched Aimée’s rumpled golden head, which lolled against her shoulder. “Quite,” she said, then laughed when her sister groaned and clutched her stomach. “At least, I am. Have we provisions aboard, or shall we haul to for the noon meal?”
“Can you really anticipate food so soon?” He glanced around at the other women, who all looked a bit green about the mouth. Father Mathieu knelt fanning one girl’s face with a palm frond.
Mademoiselle Gaillain’s chin went up a fraction. “Are you calling me a glutton?”
He saw that she was teasing and grinned. “If the slipper fits . . .”
She laughed. “I confess to a bit of queasiness at the outset, but I find myself enjoying the—” she paused, choosing her words carefully—“ peculiar scenery.”
Tristan followed her gaze to a pelican bobbing awkwardly in and out of the marshgrass that lined the scrubby shoreline. He tried to remember his first impression of this alien landscape. He’d been quite a young man then—or perhaps he’d grown up quickly in order to survive the hair-raising events of mapping Bienville’s colonial adventure.
He smiled. “You’ll get used to it. And fish is our version of manna, so I hope you like it.”
“I could eat just about anything, as long it doesn’t have worms or smell like rot.” She shuddered.
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“No guarantees,” he said, turning to brace his back against the rail. “The journey must have been difficult. Why choose to come to the other side of the world to find a husband?”
She stiffened and looked away, and he could have sworn terror had flashed in her eyes. “It is a . . . private family matter, sir,” she finally said in a suffocated little voice.
He waited for a moment, but her lips remained firmly pressed together. Apparently the subject was closed. “Forgive me, mademoiselle, I must return to my duties. I will let one of the mates know that you desire something to eat.”
But as he turned, she sighed and caught his wrist. “Wait. You are kind, and I thank you.”
He stared at the dainty fingers which lay like flowers against his sun-darkened skin. “I haven’t any drawing room manners. I don’t mean to offend.”
She quickly withdrew her hand. “I know.” There was a long pause. After an awkward moment, the fine green eyes narrowed. “What is that place up there? Are we passing the fort already?”
He turned to follow her gaze to the top of a huge bluff, where the French flag flew next to a ten-foot wooden cross. “That is my plantation.” He couldn’t keep the pride from his voice. Mine. He’d bought the land from the Indians with the finest of Canadian furs—rich, well-watered, protected land, perfect for raising corn and sugar, just right for grazing cattle.
All the better that Bienville had ignored his advice, choosing to build the fort twenty-seven miles upriver. The Indians had never seen Tristan as a threat, and he’d settled with little fanfare on a five-mile square just outside the transient Mobile clan’s winter quarters.
“Do you not live at Fort Louis? Why?”
He shrugged. “It’s a long tale. In short, I prefer to provide for my own livelihood without interference from the Crown.”
“Yet you fly the French flag. You are a strange man, Monsieur Lanier.”
He chuckled. “Which is perhaps the truest reason for my solitude.” He glanced at the younger girl, who had fallen into a fitful sleep against Mademoiselle Geneviève’s shoulder. “Please let me know if your sister requires anything for her comfort. I shall send someone back with food.”
He executed a curt bow and headed for his quarters. A woman would never understand his aversion to walls.
Geneviève stared at the sliver of salted fish in her hand and braced herself to put it in her mouth. Somehow she had expected the food to improve once they left the sea behind. Fish for breakfast. Fish for the noon meal. Fish for dinner. Manna indeed.
She leaned against the outer cabin wall, settled Aimée’s head more comfortably in her lap, and nibbled at the dubious meal. The memory of fragrant aromas from Papa’s bakery wafted across her palate, somehow covering the pungent mess in her mouth. Yeast, that inimitable substance of her childhood, had left an indelible impression that no amount of bad food could erase. Perhaps the jar of leaven she’d managed to secrete beneath her Bible had survived the journey.
The hope sustained her better than a hundred fine meals. If she could find a way to bake her pastries, she and Aimée would do well.
Swallowing misgivings, she peeked around the corner of the cabin, where Tristan Lanier stood with feet braced wide against the rocking lunge of the boat. When he turned suddenly and caught her staring, she ducked back out of sight, heart pounding. He didn’t want a wife, she reminded herself. There was nothing to fear.
FORT LOUIS DE LA LOUISIANE
What I need is a wife, Julien Dufresne thought as he shepherded the last of the Pélican girls through the stockade gate and ordered it closed and locked. The spindly-legged cadet on guard, with a longing glance at the girls’ well-padded backsides, saluted and moved to obey.
Julien drew his kerchief from the inside pocket of his jacket and mopped his face, cursing the heat, cursing the mud caked on the expensive Russia leather boots he’d had shipped from Paris last fall, and cursing the mosquitoes that found their way through three layers of clothing into his smallclothes. Most of all he cursed his nonexistent birthright—which was the reason he found himself in this godforsaken outpost, instead of comfortably ensconced in one of his father’s salons.
He cheered himself by imagining the raw streets as they must one day appear. Bricked and lined with shops they would be, with clusters of brightly dressed women fluttering in doorways and carriages pulled by fine horses trundling under sunny skies. One of those carriages would be his, and one of the women would be carrying his child—a son born of legitimate union, blessed in the cathedral which he would endow.
One of the girls he had just safely delivered would be privileged to become his bride. Maintaining a legacy of education, refinement, and landed privilege required the finest of bloodlines, and he must begin as he meant to go on.
Several of the women had proved to be young and quite beautiful, which was frankly astonishing; one had to wonder what would motivate a gently bred female to voluntarily cross the ocean to this unsettled bog. Lack of virtue would be unacceptable in the wife of the son of the Comte de Leméry—regardless on which side of the blanket he had been conceived.
One of those women would discover that she had made a most fortuitous decision in emigrating to the New World.
“Which canary did you swallow, Dufresne?”
Startled, he turned to find brick mason Jean Alexandre, a grin curling his thin-lipped mouth.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” Julien stuffed his kerchief back into his coat. “When are you fellows going to have enough bricks made to turn this quagmire into a decent thoroughfare?”
Alexandre shrugged. “Soon enough. Like most things, brick must dry before it is useful.” There was a sour silence which Julien refused to fill. Finally Alexandre chuckled. “Come down off your high horse, Dufresne. You know we’re all calculating which of the brides we can draw into the net.”
“Twenty-five women to two hundred men.” Julien passed Alexandre a sidelong look. “The odds aren’t favorable for a mud-slinger with a face like a trowel.”
The mason laughed outright. “This particular trowel-faced mud-slinger has been saving against just such a contingency. I may be able to afford considerably more than can a penniless rooster-crowned by-blow!”
Julien snarled under his breath and put a hand on his sword hilt, but Alexandre swung onto a side street, whistling. Fuming, Julien stared after him, but common sense cautioned him not to abandon his assignment. He could always deal with Alexandre at a later date.
He turned his steps once more in the direction of the L’Anglois home, located nearly a mile from the water’s edge, whence he was to deliver his lovely freight. He observed the women from the rear, watching for reactions to their surroundings. The bare bones of a town were lines marked off with flagpoles bravely struggling to stay upright in the face of daily thunderstorms. Still, it would be hard for the uneducated eye to discern order in the muddy streets and thatched cottages built precariously upon stumps in an optimistic attempt to escape the incessant flooding.
At the largest of these homes—and the only one finished—the young soldiers leading the procession halted and turned. The taller of the two presented Dufresne with a smart salute.
The cottage door burst open, spitting out a stout little woman who bowled down the steps and pushed between the two soldiers as if they were a couple of wooden pins. “Oh dear, you are here!” She rolled to a breathless stop before the Gaillain sisters and grabbed a hand of each. “I am Madame L’Anglois, you precious ones! It has been my delight to arrange lodging for you until you are all, shall we say, situated.”
The elder of the sisters gave Madame her friendly smile. “We are all grateful to have arrived safe and sound.”
Madame L’Anglois made the rounds of the younger women, kissing cheeks, patting hands, and clucking like a biddy. “Come in, come in, and we shall manage a cup of tea, though it’s that nasty Indian brew that isn’t fit for man nor beast. But here, it’s all we have, so I shan’t apolo
gize, though I’m sorry as can be.”
Duty discharged, Julien called his men to order and bid the women adieu. He caught the eye of Mademoiselle Aimée and smiled, pleased when she blushed and looked away. Clearly he had established himself as a man of importance and authority.
“To the munitions house, boys,” he said curtly. “Clean weapons and rearm, then report to mess.” Laying a hand on his sword hilt, he executed a smart about-face and headed toward the fort without a backward look at the blonde beauty.
A bit of inattention would do her good.
MOBILE VILLAGE, TWELVE MILES NORTHEAST OF FORT LOUIS
The village was quiet this afternoon. Nika sat on the floor of her chickee with Chazeh’s sweaty little head in her lap. He had been running a high fever since the day before, and she did not want him out in the sun. The others were all three miles away at Little Cedar creek; the women would be washing their few belongings—clothing, cooking utensils, and pots—while the children swam and splashed one another, practicing shallow dives off the natural bridge formed by a couple of felled water oaks. Chazeh’s twin, Tonaw, had begged to go swimming with his cousin Undin, and Nika had gratefully agreed. It was hard enough to keep an active little boy cool and still without his much more aggressive brother wreaking havoc unsupervised.
Maybe she should have taken Chazeh to the creek after all. Its sandy bank was shaded by scrubby overhanging vegetation, and sometimes a waft of breeze penetrated the dense forest. She could have let him lie with his little brown feet in the icy water and giggle at the minnows nibbling his toes.
But Nika’s sister-in-law Kumala, mother of the irrepressible Undin, would ask questions. Why are you wearing that hot dress on a day like today, Nika? Why don’t you leave Chazeh with me for a few minutes and go swimming? What was Mitannu shouting about last night?
The first two questions had a simple answer, but not one she wished to share with her friend. How Kumala and Mitannu could have come from the same family mystified Nika. Maybe it was simply the difference between male and female: Kumala with her wide smile and incessant talking, interested in everything and everyone, full of advice and recipes and gossip; Mitannu, suspicious of Nika, impatient with the boys and, as the chieftain’s son, certain of his superiority over everyone else. He was the best hunter for miles around; thus he was always dressed in beautiful leather breechclout and leggings covered with Nika’s fine beadwork, with expensive bells and shells woven into his long hair.