by Beth White
Lanier shook his head. “Bienville had discovered my affinity for languages, so on our first mapping trip up the river during the spring of 1698, he left me in an Alabama village. I was to become proficient by the time he came back for me.”
“But it was my understanding that the Alabama are hostile to us Frenchmen.”
“At the time, the Alabama were courting our favor, playing us against the English. They considered it a mark of prestige to have a white man living in their village. I was treated well.” Lanier looked down for a moment, then continued his story. “By the time Tristan came back to get me, relationships with the Indian clans on the southern end of the river had deteriorated to a degree that Bienville claimed he needed an interpreter—”
“He claimed?”
Lanier’s smile was shrewd. “Bienville has a way of feigning ignorance, which often dupes his opponents into revealing hidden motives. I had learned enough of several native languages to be helpful . . . so I returned. He would take me into a confab with some village chief, pretend not to understand a word, then listen to what they actually said as I fumbled to translate.”
“Brilliant.”
“He can be.” Lanier’s smile was rueful. “But when he’s convinced he’s right and you’re wrong—” He reached down and broke off a cattail from the marshy riverbank grass. “The rift between him and Tristan began while I was gone. They had decided at first to locate the settlement down on the western bluff where the Mobile River opens into the bay. Tristan saw huge advantages in being near the deepwater port and the Massacre Island warehouse. But the Indian chiefs convinced Bienville that it would be better to settle up here, closer to their villages.”
“That was five years ago, yes?”
Lanier nodded. “By the time Tristan brought me back, the fort was under construction and the town mapped out. Bienville parceled out land to those with the means to build on it, and probably would have allotted Tristan as much as any of the other officers.” He shrugged. “My brother is a bit stubborn too. He refused to accept any land as a gift.”
“Wouldn’t that be considered insubordination?”
“Maybe—if Tristan hadn’t been so valuable to Bienville. He lived in the barracks and did his job as far as he was able. Not long after, he took an Indian wife and went to live near the Mobile village. Bienville might have court-martialed him but for Le Sueur’s intervention.”
“But Le Sueur is now dead.” And Tristan Lanier had a wife, a fact which Mathieu wouldn’t have guessed from his reaction to Geneviève.
“Yes.” Lanier’s young face was sober. “Le Sueur was a good man who helped keep Bienville somewhat grounded. Complicated relations with the court in France, the English starting to negotiate with the Indians to the east, plus the Spanish constantly asking for loans of provisions and munitions . . . Bienville walks a narrow bridge from crisis to crisis. No wonder he falls off occasionally.”
“What caused the final break with your brother?”
The reed between Lanier’s hands snapped. “I—I’m not sure I can speak of it, Father. You would had to have known Sholani to understand.”
“Tristan’s wife?”
Lanier looked away, but not before Mathieu saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. “Yes. She was—she made my brother so happy.”
“What happened?”
“Two years ago, Bienville sent Tristan on another mapping expedition, across the river and heading north and west. While he was gone, a band of British-armed hostiles raided the Mobile village while their men were hunting and took some women and children as prisoners. Bienville wouldn’t retaliate because nobody was killed, and he hoped to keep peace with the Alabama. I would have gone after Sholani myself, but I had been sent to Veracruz to buy supplies. Tristan got back and—” Lanier’s hands mimed an explosion. “Everybody thought he was going to kill Bienville.”
Mathieu crossed himself.
“But he wouldn’t waste time,” Lanier continued, grimfaced. “He tracked the Alabama up to the Little Tomeh village. They’d bought a few of the Mobile children, but said the women had been sold to English agents. So Tristan kept going. I guess he would’ve been crazy enough to go all the way into Carolina by himself—” He stopped and swallowed. “But he found her three miles away at an abandoned campfire.”
“Dead.” Mathieu had known it, but the word still fell from his lips like a lead weight.
“Yes. She’d been raped.” Lanier’s voice shook with quiet rage. “Tristan caught up with them that night and killed both men. He brought the other Mobile women back with him. That’s when he resigned his commission and moved down to the lower bluff on the bay. To his credit, Bienville let him go. Now they circle around one another like wildcats, with me caught in the middle.”
Mathieu had been blessed—sometimes, he thought, cursed—with the spiritual gift of compassion. Tristan Lanier’s grief and loss flayed him to the soul. He couldn’t say whether fulfillment of his quest would bring relief or a greater burden, but he knew, deep within his spirit, that he must carry it out, come what may. He reached up to grip the cross upon his chest. “What makes Bienville think your brother will lead this new peace mission you propose?”
“Tristan isn’t as detached as he’d like to appear. My father instilled in us the instinct to protect the weak. Now that these Frenchwomen have arrived, Tristan will do whatever he can to keep them safe.”
Mathieu bowed his head. Tristan Lanier seemed to be every bit the man he had hoped. Unfortunately, that also meant that he might not live to see another new year.
Holy Father in heaven, I wait upon your direction. Show me the way to go.
Seated upon one of the commander’s ugly brocaded chairs, Aimée plied her fan, hoping that the deepened color of her cheeks from the heat in the small room would outweigh the unattractive (and uncomfortable) damp patches under her arms.
She cast a glance up at Monsieur Dufresne and found him, to her chagrin, absorbed in watching the doorway, where Father Mathieu had just followed Lieutenant Lanier into the room. She shut her fan with a snap and rapped him sharply across the knuckles. “Forgive me if I bore you, sir. Perhaps you’d like to yield your place to Sergeant Lefleur, so that you may seek the far more improving company of Father Mathieu.” It was not an empty threat. Handsome young Lefleur had been casting languishing looks her way all night.
Dufresne rubbed his hand but gave her an indulgent smile. “You’d find that a waste of time, my dear. Lefleur lives on but a hundred livres per year and is in perpetual debt to the warehouse. I was merely wondering if we might slip away for a private conversation. One constantly feels the weight of your sister’s disapproval. She is such a . . . severe young lady.”
“I was sure you’d been watching her,” Aimée said. “Geneviève can be quite beautiful, when she dresses correctly.” She flirted her lashes, then lifted them coyly, as she had practiced in the mirror this afternoon. “I vow she makes me feel quite homely.”
Dufresne raised her hand to his lips with a gallant flourish. “My dear, you are a rose among dandelions, everywhere you go. You will certainly have your pick of the eligible men in the settlement.”
Aimée glanced at Bienville, in conversation with Father Mathieu. “Perhaps not all.”
“The commander is . . . a hard man to understand. He stands to be governor of the colony, should his brother Iberville die, and in any case would be set for life with the choicest of estates. He has no need to marry for social or financial advantage.” Dufresne shrugged. “But let us converse of more interesting things. I would like to know more of your family background. If I remember correctly, you and your sister joined the Pélican party from La Rochelle. Or was it Rochefort?”
“La Rochelle,” she replied absently. “We met Father Mathieu there.”
“But I had understood that the bishop chose the women from convents and orphanages in and around Paris, and they all traveled to Rochefort together. Captain Ducoudray says you all stayed in the Rochefort o
rphanage until the Pélican sailed to La Rochelle to pick up more supplies.”
Alarm shot through her. “That’s what I meant! We came from Rochefort first.”
He smiled. “A natural mistake. Tell me your impression of Rochefort. It is, I believe, quite a smelly little city.”
She eyed him warily. “I did not find it so.”
“Well, perhaps not. Fish aren’t known to smell so much.” He reached inside his pocket and extracted a beautiful enameled snuff box. Dropping a pinch onto his wrist, he sniffed, then sneezed into his sleeve. “After all, the orphanage is quite ten miles from the oceanfront.”
“Um . . .” She began to pleat her dress into a ruin of wrinkles.
“Come, cherie, it is not such a bad thing that you and your sister aren’t like those shallow Parisian misses. Most men appreciate a woman who can comport herself in rather more rural circumstances, as long as she is cultured and devout.”
She must deflect this disastrous turn in the conversation. “That is true. My papa took us to Paris once when the Comte needed him for a large court banquet. The girls we met there were as vain as peacocks, and could not even read or write their names!”
“The world is in a sad state, eh, mademoiselle?” Dufresne shook his head. “In what other disciplines did your esteemed papa instruct his beautiful daughters? I would venture to guess that you are conversant with all the classics from Plato to Horace.”
She laughed at the very idea. “Oh, monsieur, you are pleased to tweak me! I promise you, I am not like to bore you with homilies and lectures of that sort. Geneviève is much more educated than I. Why, she can quote large sections of the New Testament!”
Dufresne looked impressed and somewhat skeptical. “Mademoiselle, you astonish me. I shall have to ask her to straighten me out as to the Sermon on the Mount, as I’m never quite certain whether one is to refrain from coveting his neighbor’s wife and remove the splinter in his eye—or the other way round!”
Aimée giggled, drawing the curious and indulgent gazes of those who stood nearby. “Monsieur l’Aide-Major, please don’t tell Geneviève I spilled her secret,” she begged, gaining control over her merriment. “She is sensitive about being considered a bigheaded, overeducated woman.”
He made a mime of buttoning his lip, winked, and changed the subject. But Aimée couldn’t help noticing that during the ensuing conversation Dufresne’s thoughtful gaze frequently went to her sister.
She gritted her teeth. She would not allow Geneviève to steal another beau from her.
Tristan hauled on the reins of the plow, forcing his ox to halt midfield. He yanked at the kerchief loosely knotted about his throat, untying it and swiping it across his sweaty face. Why he had failed to bring a canteen of water with him he would never know. Well, perhaps he did know and didn’t want to admit it. His thoughts these days always seemed to land where he had strictly forbidden them to go—twenty-seven miles north in Fort Louis.
Not since Sholani’s death had he been so preoccupied, so . . . uncontrollably dreamy. He was reminded of days when his mother would find him perched in a maple tree drawing pictures of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne’s sister Catherine-Jeanne. Tall and strikingly lovely, socially as far above shy young Tristan Lanier as the stars in the heavens, Catherine had also possessed a kind heart. She never failed to greet him and give him her slow, curving smile when she passed in church.
Jogging the reins with a shout to the ox, he pushed the plow down the row of squash, a rueful smile tugging at his lips. The romanticized charcoal drawings inspired by Catherine Le Moyne would never hang upon the walls of Versailles, but they had at least convinced his father that he had sufficient talent to enter an apprenticeship with one of the greatest cartographers of the age, Charles Levasseur. Thus had begun his adventures with Levasseur, Iberville, and Le Sueur, and his deep friendship with the flamboyant young Bienville.
He sometimes wondered where life’s road might have taken him had he chosen to stay in Canada, rather than joining the expedition to explore the Gulf of Mexico. A safer path, no doubt. But to have never loved Sholani? Never to have seen the ocean’s roaring surf or stand in a field knowing that the land as far as his eye would reach belonged to him?
No, despite the pain of betrayal and grief so deep that it still sometimes clawed him awake at night, he would not go back.
One regret lingered . . . that he would have no son to come behind him, a hardy lad with whom to plot next year’s garden, to teach the use of sexton and compass, to fill with stories passed down from his own father. The child he had created with Sholani had perished with her. Marc-Antoine would inherit this plantation, if he ever left off gadding about at Bienville’s behest, so perhaps his sons would bear with the tales of crotchety old Uncle Tristan.
If that thought struck a minor chord of dissatisfaction, it was no more than he deserved. He should never have left her that day. She had begged to come with him, but he’d convinced her it would not be good for the baby. A pregnant woman, daily purging her breakfast, craving sleep every afternoon, would only slow him down. He’d wanted to discharge this one last long mapping mission for Bienville and get home, the quicker the better. Perhaps he had gotten too comfortable with the Indian way of ordering women about. Perhaps he’d grown a bit weary of the tears that seemed to lurk close to the surface and spill over whenever she was crossed. In the end he’d left her sobbing in their thatched cabin, shutting the door with just a bit too much force, striding off toward the river with a couple of soldiers assigned him by Bienville.
The last time he’d seen her alive, he had only kissed the top of her head and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. You are my heart, he’d been thinking but could not say it.
The dull ache in his breast was threatening to turn into a knife wound, so it was a relief to espy a figure approaching over the eastern horizon. He squinted against the bright morning sun, and finally made out the dark head of one of his Pascagoula Indian neighbors. Bienville employed several of them as runners between Massacre Island and Fort Louis, paying them in ammunition, cloth, or whatever European sundry they might be in need of. It had been several days since a brave named Hatchet had passed through on his way to the fort, stopping only to accept a dipper of water from Tristan’s well and promising to return with any word from Marc-Antoine, whom the Indians called Bright Tongue.
As the Indian got closer, Tristan saw that this fellow didn’t have the sharp-boned face of the lugubrious Hatchet. He was on the short side, even for the small-statured Pascagoula, bowlegged but fleet, running over the soft ground that Tristan had struggled to clear all by himself in that season of blinding pain after Sholani was taken from him. The Indian easily loped toward him, raised an arm in greeting, and he recognized Deerfoot, a man who had taught Tristan much about hunting the dense coastal woods.
Leaving the ox standing with a handful of grass to occupy him, Tristan walked toward the Indian and when he got close enough hailed him in the Mobilian tongue.
“Tree-Stah!” called Deerfoot, giving his best approximation of Tristan’s name. “Greetings on this beautiful day! You will have sunstroke if you stay out here with nothing on your head.”
Tristan grinned, giving him a whack on the shoulder for greeting. Deerfoot had tried unsuccessfully on many occasions to talk Tristan out of his handsome tricorn. “I left my hat in the cabin to keep crazy Indians from stealing it. What brings you up from the island today?”
Deerfoot, part of a distant clan of Sholani’s family, made his home at the east end of Massacre Island. He had a sweet wife and four little girls who adored “Uncle Tree-Stah” and delighted in decorating him with wildflower crowns and feeding him their mother’s thick soup made of venison broth, crabmeat, and okra, with panfried corn bread to sop up the gravy. Very different from Geneviève Gaillain’s delicate French loaves, to be sure, but tasty and filling.
“I’m on my way to the fort. Did you know that a supply ship has come from Martinique?”
“No! But
that is good news. Can you wait for me to gather up a few things and come with you?”
Deerfoot tapped his chin in pretended reluctance. “I don’t think you can keep up with me.”
“And yet I beat you in the island footrace not ten days ago.” Tristan began to unhitch the ox.
Deerfoot jumped up onto the animal’s broad, shaggy back. “I was nursing a twisted ankle that day. I am well now.”
“Then you will have no excuse when I outrun you today.” Tristan gave the ox a good-natured swat with his hand to get him moving and picked up the reins to lead him toward the barn.
“I’ve already run thirty-six miles this morning, but I’ll be waiting for you at Burelle’s tavern when you drag in.” Deerfoot crossed his legs and leaned back on his elbows, lounging on the ox’s muscular haunches as if he lay on a blanket next to his wife’s cookfire. “What I don’t understand, Tree-Stah, is why you hide out on this bluff, when you could live with us on the island, where there is at least an occasional game of dice—or up the river with your own people. Hatchet tells me the white women who came over the ocean are handsome to look at, even though they don’t know how to cook a meal that will fill a man’s belly.”
Tristan could think of at least one Frenchwoman who was both handsome to look at and knew her way around an oven. It was a moot point anyway. Three weeks since her arrival, she was undoubtedly already married. He shrugged. “I like to be alone.”
“You didn’t like it so much in the days when my pretty cousin threw back her blanket for you. Sholani is dead for two years, my friend. It is unnatural for a young man to live out his days with nobody for company but a fat French cow.” Deerfoot shoved the ox in the back of its square head with his foot.
Tristan scowled over his shoulder. “You gossip like an old woman, Deerfoot. Leave me alone, or I will send you on to the fort without so much as a drink of water, while I come in the boat.”