The Pelican Bride

by Beth White

  Indeed it was less than ten minutes by Tristan’s reckoning before the blast of a musket, presumably fired at the ceiling, penetrated the din. He was very glad he was not asleep in the bed directly above the bar.

  The noise and confusion faded, and the crowd parted to admit an officer wielding a smoking musket in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Through the smoke Tristan recognized his little brother.

  “What is the meaning of this?” roared Marc-Antoine. He had apparently been abed, as he was sketchily dressed in breeches and a linen shirt, halfway buttoned and tails flapping, and had bothered with neither waistcoat nor shoes. The dark hair flowing freely about his shoulders and a two-day growth of beard added to the look of a particularly enraged pirate. Then his eyes widened. “Tristan? What are you doing here?”

  “I assure you it’s not by choice.” Tristan grabbed Connard and Fautisse each by the collar and hauled them forward. “Here are two of your culprits, and the third is sliding along the wall over there.” He inclined his head toward Lafleur, who was attempting to slip out the door unnoticed.

  “Don’t let him get away!” Marc-Antoine snapped at the uniformed guard loitering nearest the door, then turned his attention back to the sulking and bloody miscreants wriggling in Tristan’s grasp. “You started this? Never mind, we’ll sort it out at headquarters. Where’s Burelle?”

  “Here, sir.” The tavern owner pushed through the crowd.

  “Shut this place down. Everybody go home, to the barracks, or face arrest.” He scowled, brandishing the musket. “Not you, Lafleur! You’re coming with me.”

  In five minutes or less, the tavern was clear of patrons. Burelle set to work righting chairs, shaking his head over a broken table, and picking up dented pewterware. Tristan, lending a hand to the tavern-keep, saw a side of his happy-go-lucky brother that seemed to have developed in his absence: the decisive, clear-thinking officer with a natural gift for leadership. Marc-Antoine sheathed his sword but continued to grasp the musket as he searched the deserted room, making sure no troublemakers lurked in shadowy corners. When he came upon the surgeon-major, still slumbering peacefully beneath the card table, he poked the man with a bare toe. Barraud failed to respond. Marc-Antoine cracked a smile visible to no one but Tristan and let him be. The three miscreants slouched near the bar, Connard bracing a set of cracked ribs and Lafleur mopping at a bloody nose.

  Marc-Antoine pronounced himself satisfied that the situation was under control and ordered the troublemakers to move out ahead of him. He turned at the door. “Tris, will you come? I’ll want a sober witness.”

  Tristan fished in his pocket for a couple of sous, which he flipped onto the bar as he passed. “I’ll be back later, Burelle.”

  The march across the dark parade ground was accomplished in short order, Marc-Antoine being in no mood to sympathize with cracked ribs or broken noses. At the guardhouse, Marc-Antoine produced a key and shoved his prisoners inside with no ceremony.

  “I deed the surgeod,” Lafleur protested.

  “You’ll have to wait until he sobers up.” Marc-Antoine slammed the door and locked it again. “Come on, Tristan. Bienville will want a report.”

  By the time the two of them crossed the short distance between guardhouse and headquarters, Marc-Antoine had buttoned his shirt, but it still flapped loose over his breeches. Tristan wondered what time it was. The moon was a silver boat floating over the stockade, and nothing but the whir of an owl and the clanking of Marc-Antoine’s sword broke the silence.

  Tristan stood back as his brother rapped on the door to Bienville’s quarters. At an impatient “Come,” they entered to find the commander seated at his desk, fully dressed except for tricorn and coat. Bienville laid down his quill and addressed Marc-Antoine. “Situation under control?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bienville scowled at Tristan. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Witness.”

  Bienville’s lip curled. “Witness or participant?”

  Tristan’s hands bunched. “Do I look like I’ve been in a brawl?”

  Bienville had the grace to look away. “It’s been a long, frustrating day.” He gestured for Marc-Antoine and Tristan to pull over chairs. “Sit down and tell me what the uproar was all about.”

  They did so, Marc-Antoine finishing, “Fautisse, Connard, and Lafleur are in the guardhouse.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Bloody knuckles, broken ribs and noses, the usual. Burelle’s place took some damage.”

  Bienville grunted. “What started it?”

  Marc-Antoine looked at Tristan. “Not sure. That’s why I brought my brother.”

  Bienville’s thick brows drew together. “All right then. Let’s have it.”

  Tristan briefly described his approach to the faro game and his sense that trouble could be brewing, inferred from the toxic blend of undisciplined and inebriated personalities at the table. “And then the money and credit ran out for Connard and Lafleur. The bets turned to women.”

  Bienville slid a hand over his face. “I knew this was going to happen. Any woman in particular?”

  Tristan tried to remember. “A girl named Ysabeau Bonnet and another one . . . Oüanet maybe?”

  “Last week it was the Gaillain sisters and Françoise Dubonnier. I warned them this has got to stop. Choosing a husband shouldn’t take this long.” Bienville’s smile turned grim. “Maybe I should line them up and draw lots, like they used to do in the Bible.”

  Marc-Antoine sat up straight. “Sir! You can’t—”

  “I’m joking, Lanier.” Bienville barked a laugh. “After all, that’s what started this contretemps, eh? I’ve been too patient with these double-minded women.” He snatched a piece of parchment and jabbed his quill into the open inkpot. He scratched furiously for a minute, sanded the ink and blew it clean. “Make sure La Salle gets this before breakfast. The remaining single women have one month to choose husbands. At the end of that time, I’ll host a ball to announce the betrothals of any women still holding out. On that date, financial support from the Crown ends.” He handed the paper to Marc-Antoine. “If you want the younger Gaillain girl, you’d better speak up now. You leave for Alabama territory in less than forty-eight hours.”

  Marc-Antoine shook his head. “She’s pretty, but I don’t need the headache. She’s too fond of her own face.”

  “Fine. Then get your gear together and prepare your contingent. Wait, one more thing.” Bienville stroked the quill through his fingers and looked at Tristan. “Is it true you’re willing to go with them?”

  “Yes.” Until that moment, he hadn’t been sure of his answer. Perhaps his brother’s heretofore unsuspected maturity had tipped the balance.

  “That’s good. I’m . . . glad you’re here. Can you keep your mouth shut?”

  “You know I’m not a talker.”

  “No, you’re a thinker and a doer.” Bienville gave a one-sided smile. “I’ve missed your input, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you on more than one occasion. But your country needs you this time.”

  10

  During the heat of the afternoon, the women of Louisiane had developed the habit of meeting in small groups in someone’s home for tea and conversation—a short break from backbreaking labor in kitchens, in gardens, or over washboards at the creek. Those with infants or small children would put them down for a nap on pallets on the floor, then settle themselves on the gallery outside, hoping to stir a breeze with fans woven from palmetto fronds. Skirts would be hiked to the outrageous vicinity of the knees, stockings and shoes kicked off, and stomachers unlaced at the bosom. There was a tacit agreement for mutual nonjudgment, even amongst the most prudish of the matrons. It was simply too hot for more than minimum clothing.

  Today there was much to discuss, particularly among the unmarried women. Françoise Dubonnier, self-appointed spokeswoman for the Pélican girls, had drawn together Geneviève and Aimée, Ysabeau and Edmé, and Noël Dumesnil—the so-called “holdouts”—for
a meeting on the gallery of the Brossard cabin, home of recently wed Thérèse Brochon. Thérèse had outdone herself as hostess, producing a silver plate of delicate rice cakes dusted with confectioner’s sugar her besotted new husband had purchased on the black market from Julien Dufresne. She served sassafras tea in delicate Limoges cups, given her by her mother and coddled all the way from Rouen. Geneviève guessed there was not a woman in the group who would not have given her right pinky for one of those cups—or who would have admitted it.

  The Brossards owned two straight chairs and a rocker, which Pierre had paid for by bricking the foundation of carpenter Claude Fautisse’s cabin. The fact that Fautisse—who had been courting Edmé—was presently incarcerated in the guardhouse because he had fought two men in defense of her honor had been the topic of considerable conversation already. Edmé sat fanning herself in the rocker, endeavoring to look modestly flustered at such notoriety, but achieving a pronounced simper at best.

  Poor Ysabeau—Geneviève noticed that “poor” seemed to have become a permanent part of Ysabeau’s name—had no such romantic embarrassment to sigh over. She had lost one fiancé to yellow fever, and the second had gambled her away over a faro board, earning his own fare to the guardhouse. The third man to claim her, Ensign René Connard, was also currently under arrest.

  Ysabeau sat on the floor of the gallery, hugging her knees and sniffling into a yellow lawn handkerchief. “I want to go home,” she said over and over, making Geneviève wish she could stuff the handkerchief in the girl’s mouth.

  Geneviève herself perched barefoot on one of the broad rails of the gallery with her skirt lifted to her knees, perhaps not a particularly ladylike posture, but more apt to catch a chance breeze. She had passed on the sassafras tea, preferring to occupy her hands with her tatting.

  “You cannot go home, Ysabeau,” Françoise said with far more patience than Geneviève felt. “We all agreed to come for our own reasons and, for most of us, circumstances in France were worse than they are here anyway. If you can’t find a suitable mate here, where the men outnumber us ten to one, what hope do you have of contracting a husband at all?”

  “I don’t know,” Ysabeau wailed, “but I wanted to marry Denis Lafleur! He is so good-looking, and he even has a pretty name!”

  “Do you really want to marry a man who would gamble you away on the turn of a card?” Aimée frowned. “As if you were a possession like a horse or a pig, for heaven’s sake? Have you no pride?” When Ysabeau promptly burst into fresh tears, Aimée lifted her hands. “Ysabeau, you know there was no betrothal contract with Monsieur Lafleur, no matter what he told you.”

  “Perhaps Monsieur Connard will turn out to be the best husband in New France,” Noël said. A shy, plain girl with stick-straight brown hair, hazel eyes, and freckles sprinkled across a blunt nose, she was the only one who had received no marriage offers at all as of yet. She tended to hide in corners at social functions, and would turn an unattractive orange if unexpectedly addressed. “You are so pretty—just think, you have had six offers already.”

  Ysabeau gave Noël a tremulous smile of gratitude, but her answer was cut off when their governess swept to her full, statuesque height.

  “Girls, this is getting us nowhere,” Françoise said. “What concerns me most is Monsieur le Commandant’s highhanded attempt to strong-arm us into making hasty decisions about this serious and delicate matter. If we do not choose mates by a certain time, he says he’ll cut off the financial support of the Crown.” She paused, hands on hips, and looked around at her companions. “I for one don’t plan to stand for this—this—interference!”

  Geneviève suspected that some of Françoise’s dudgeon could be attributed to the commander’s failure to be reeled in by her less-than-subtle lures.

  Aimée bounced to her feet. “I agree! It is not fair that he removes himself from the list of eligible bachelors, when he has perhaps the greatest income and property in the entire settlement! And then to send the next greatest catch off on some ridiculous Indian mission—!”

  “I don’t know, Aimée,” Thérèse said, looking over her shoulder as if she expected a savage to come bounding out of the forest at any moment. “I shouldn’t like to be carried off and made to wear those shapeless tunics the Indian women wear.”

  “They don’t wear them because they’re Indians, ninny, they wear them because they are slaves.” Edmé wrinkled her forehead. “At least I think so.”

  “Do you think the Indians are people in the same sense that we are?” Noël asked. “The King does not want us to intermarry with them because they are heathen.”

  Geneviève had heard enough. She slid off the rail onto the soft ground below the gallery and stood with her hands clenched behind her back, trying to gain control of her temper. The King had sent dragoons into her home in the name of God. He had beheaded her father in the name of God—when everyone knew Louis kept more than one mistress and had more illegitimate children than legitimate. Despite that contract she had been forced to sign, she was not going to marry the next Catholic bachelor who offered, just because Bienville said she must.

  God in heaven, I came here by faith. I came because Father Mathieu made a way, and I trust him. Help me see your will in this muddle. Help me take care of my sister . . .

  The other girls were staring at her. She took a breath and let it out. “Noël, of course the Indians are people. Their language is different, their skin is darker, but don’t you think those women are just as afraid of change as you are? Still, they’ve lived here longer, which means we can learn from them.”

  Edmé looked skeptical. “Would you marry an Indian man, Geneviève?”

  “I don’t know.” Geneviève looked away. “There’s little chance one would ask me.” She thought of the man with the string of human scalps she had encountered in Roy’s kitchen—the day Tristan Lanier bought her bread. She remembered Tristan’s intervention between her and the Indian, the genuine alarm in his eyes, the measured way he had spoken to the man in that harsh, alien language. She had not understood the words, but clearly they had been discussing the scalps—in a businesslike tone, as if they had been animal pelts brought in for sale.

  In a wash of clarity, she was in Pont-de-Montvert, on the day the Abbé of Chaila was assassinated. Three dragoons in full regalia had come for her father—young men like these boy soldiers who stood guard here with Bienville. They were laughing at her mother, who had flung herself to her knees begging for mercy, flirting with Aimée and promising to come back for her, even as they dragged her father from the kitchen through the bakery shop. Two of the young men had her father by the arms, and the other walked behind them, prodding their prisoner with his sword.

  Standing at the top of the stairs, listening to her mother scream, she knew she must do something. She went for her father’s rifle leaning in the corner beneath the stairs, then found his powder horn and shot in a small cupboard. Jean Cavalier had thought it amusing to take her hunting on Sunday afternoons; he had shown her how to prime and load it, how to aim and brace herself for the kickback. They had killed rabbits in the wooded hills beyond the village, bringing them back for her mother’s stew pot, and she had thought little of it—until she stalked those young dragoons headed for the green, where their officers waited to deal with traitors and heretics who had dared to “reform” the King’s religion and murder the Abbé. Cavalier was elsewhere now, and she was on her own.

  Who had murdered the Abbé? Geneviève wouldn’t be surprised if it were Cavalier himself. But it was not her gentle father, who rose every morning when the sky was still dark, to read the Scripture and kneel for half an hour in prayer. Father, who spent his days creating beautiful and mouth-watering pastries for the loyalist elites in the neighboring village of Fraissinet-de-Lozère.

  The laughing young dragoons did not suspect they were followed by the chef’s older daughter. The pastry shop was at the edge of the village, and it was a long, circuitous walk along the road to the green.
With the gun under her arm, Geneviève cut through the candlemaker’s yard, ducked under some laundry hanging in the summer breeze, then ran parallel to the main road until she darted to the right and came out a hundred yards ahead of the dragoons. Panting, she planted herself in the middle of the road, raised the gun and waited. She could hear them coming, heard the cursing when one of them tripped on the rut that always washed out in front of Monsieur Malbècq’s pigsty. Her heart thundered like a millstone rolling downhill. It had not occurred to her at the time that she could only shoot one of them with the musket, and that the other two were certain to take reprisal. She only meant to stop them from taking her father away.

  By the time they rounded the bend that followed the boundary of Madame Babin’s property, her resolve was steeled.

  Her father saw her first. “Ginette!” he groaned. “No! Go home!”

  The dragoons halted for a moment, no doubt nonplused by the sight of the crazy girl in flour-dusted cap and apron, aiming a gun at them. The one with the sword stopped scraping pig slop from his boots and burst out laughing. He came around in front of her father and his companions, playfully thrusting the sword at her. “Come here, little one, and I will teach you the duel of love.”

  She shot him first.

  And that was how she came to be aboard the Pélican.

  “We’ll take two pirogues.” Marc-Antoine stood behind Tristan, who was seated at a table in officers’ quarters. He leaned over Tristan’s shoulder to unroll the map and flatten it on the table. “The Alabama villages begin about three hundred miles upriver, the first one on the Koasati bluff. We hope to make an average of ten miles a day, which should put us back here within a couple of months.”

  Tristan followed his brother’s finger as it traced the river bends on a map he himself had drawn during that last fateful mapping expedition nearly two years ago. He had traveled with the parchments, a bottle of ink, several quills, and his sextant packed in a cleverly designed map case his father had given him the day he left with Iberville. Father had made it himself out of a pine log cut in half, then hollowed out and lined with cedar. It had been flattened slightly on top and bottom so that it could function as a seat, and was finished with leather hinges and a hand-worked iron hasp.