by Clare Clark
It was not just Elisabeth who was grateful for winter. The brisker air lifted spirits dulled by months of stifling heat and humidity and brought an end at last to the cursed mosquitoes. The warehouses were adequately stocked and the forest a fine source of firewood. It was generally agreed among the settlers that a little French weather was by no means unwelcome.
Their sanguinity was short-lived. That winter, the winter that heralded the year of 1709, was the bleakest anyone could remember. Elisabeth’s crowded shelves grew empty. The supplies in the warehouses dwindled. By February they had run out. The commandant despatched an emergency expedition to nearby savage villages but the savages had little to spare and the men returned with less than a quarter of the anticipated rations.
There was hardly any meat. Rabbits were scarce, deer scarcer. The men shot scrawny squirrels and scoured the shreds of flesh from the bones with their teeth, while the women foraged in the swamps and forests around the town for acorns and edible roots. The garrison was sealed and the unmarried soldiers once more billeted upon the natives. Only the taverner Burelle scraped up an income of sorts. The maize beer brewed by the savages was neither as strong nor as flavoursome as French wine, but it served at least to blunt the rodent gnaw of hunger. In Burelle’s modest dwelling, the oak chest by the fireplace was crammed with darned stockings and lengths of faded silk ribbon.
In so small a settlement it was hard to keep secrets. Hunger soured the breath and sharpened eyes and tongues. Marie-Françoise de Boisrenaud accused Renée Gilbert of entering her storehouse on the pretence of returning a dish and stealing a handful of chestnuts. Perrine Roussel came close to blows with the wife of the ferret-faced carpenter over the just apportionment of a small crop of the tasteless mushrooms that grew among the roots of the walnut tree at the edge of the forest. Jean-Claude had Elisabeth salt the meat he brought to her when it was dark and store it in a barrel he had concealed behind the woodpiles in the outhouse.
‘How on earth did you manage it?’ she asked him the first time, her eyes round as he unwrapped the bloody haunch of venison from his pack. ‘I thought there were no deer.’
‘There are always deer for the hunter who knows in which direction to point his musket.’
‘But so much of it! What about the others?’
‘If the others lack meat, then they must devise their own ways of getting it. The wise man makes sure to hunt alone. Tonight it is just you and me and a feast fit for a king. What else could possibly matter?’
She touched her fingers to the meat, thinking of the wives and their hungry eyes, their snatching fingers. Let their husbands bring them meat, she told herself, if they care enough to do so, and she took his face in her hands and kissed him. He tasted of tobacco and the medicinal sting of eau-de-vie.
‘Meat,’ she murmured. ‘You work miracles.’
She was frugal with the meat and it lasted a good while. The sacks of Indian corn they pushed beneath the bed, wrapping them in deerskins to protect them from the mice. She did not ask where they had come from but measured out the grains carefully, half-cup by half-cup, and afterwards going on her hands and knees to pick up any that might have spilled. Once she heard footsteps in the lane outside and she froze, her fists closing over the gold kernels like contraband.
They ate in darkness, stealthily, an old blanket over the platille window and the lamps blown out, spooning up thick gravy in the dying light of the fire. The river was frozen above the red-painted post that marked the border between the Ouma and their northern neighbours, the Bayagoulas. There could be no venturing north. There were rumours that the Chickasaw, stirred up by the English and in league with several of the smaller savage nations, planned an attack on the depleted garrison. The attack did not come. Shrivelled with cold and famine, the town closed in upon itself, hunched against the blasts of the north wind as the desolate seabirds shrieked in the ice-grey sky.
The sacks of corn grew lean. In the bitter early mornings, when fingers fumbled buttons and the damp chill cut through bone, Elisabeth watched the pinched grey faces of her neighbours as they toiled with wood and with water. Two or three of them were big with child. She covered her head with her patched scarf and did not meet their eyes, muttering the required pleasantries with lips that were clumsy with shame and a choked-up sort of anger at the weight of their wretchedness.
Sometimes she went with them to the forest in search of food. They spoke little, their eyes blunt with hunger and fatigue. When she discovered a fistful of sour late mulberries or a straggly half-dead patch of wild onions, she took only a few and thrust the rest at the others, refusing their gratitude. Afterwards, alone in the cottage, she pulled the sack from its hiding place beneath the bed and ran what was left of the corn through her fingers, inhaling its old-barn smell before putting it back, pulling the deerskin tight over it as though she was tucking an infant into bed.
One night in March, Jean-Claude brought wine. They drank it in bed directly from the bottle, wiping their mouths on the backs of their hands. The wine was Spanish, thick with sunshine and the turned-earth sweetness of blackberries. The embers of the fire caught in the bottle and spilled jewels of dark red light on the sea-green silk of the feather quilt as he protested bitterly against the stifling confines of the settlement, the dull and narrow preoccupations of his fellows. He declared himself bored beyond the limits of reason by the political manoeuvrings of the garrison officers, their petty jostlings, their fixation with favour and with hierarchy.
‘They rot here with their seals and their promises, scouring the horizon for boats that might bring them a word of praise from the minister-in-waiting for this or the third undersecretary to the commissary of that. They are truly a pitiable lot, these Frenchmen of yours. The colony of Louisiana covers almost two thousand miles of bountiful St Louis River and they cluster here like timid children clutching at their mother’s skirts, waiting to lick the leftover smears from her baking bowl? No wonder their wives starve and their mewling infants too.’
‘The river is frozen solid,’ Elisabeth protested gently. ‘Even the hardiest of you hairy Québecois cannot travel when the river is impassable.’
‘Do you know what they do, these countrymen of yours?’ Jean-Claude frowned and took another gulp of wine. ‘They write angry letters to the Minister of the Marine accusing Sieur de Bienville of selling fifty barrels of the colony’s best gunpowder to the Spanish in exchange for gold. Perhaps he did so. Perhaps he did not. But the colony endures, though the same minister in his elegant house in Paris would not risk a fingernail to save it. The whole army of Louisiana numbers hardly more than one hundred, of which one quarter are not fit to fight, but somehow the commandant sees that we hold our position here against all the odds. In the Mediterranean we are at war with the Spanish, but the commandant maintains his own private peace with Pensacola. He has made us safe. Why should it concern me that the esteemed Bienville may or may not grow rich on the proceeds of gunpowder he has contrived, through a miracle, not to require?’
Elisabeth smiled. ‘You cannot expect the commissary to think as you do. I am as much an admirer of the commandant as you are but, whatever his abilities, the gunpowder is not his to sell.’
‘There, you see, you are as French as the rest of them. You all believe that you can bring the rules of Paris here. But this is not Paris. Look at your Frenchmen stamping their feet and dashing off their furious letters on the King’s paper. How will those letters reach France when there are no ships to take them?’
‘They are idiots, it is true.’
‘They would be better to sell the paper and the ink and be done with it. At least there would be profit in it.’
‘Your cynical posturing does not convince me. You are not half so much a Diogenes as you pretend.’
Elisabeth uncurled herself lazily, stretching her arms high above her head. Reaching out, Jean-Claude caught her wrists in one hand and pulled her towards him, his other hand seeking the hidden warmth beneath her skirts. Elisabe
th sighed and leaned in to him.
‘You Parisians are all the same,’ he murmured. ‘I might defend myself against your accusations if I had the first idea what it was you were talking about.’
Elisabeth laughed and took his head between her hands, tipping his face up towards hers. He smiled at her and the miracle of him squeezed her heart like a fist.
‘My love,’ she whispered. ‘You shall never have to defend yourself to me. Not if you live to be a hundred.’
IT WAS SEVERAL months before spring came and men of his kind returned to the village. From their place in the canebrake, Auguste and the dog watched them as they mounted the bluff, two of them, tall and short, accompanied by a native servant. He did not know them. They were not soldiers. The tall one was a gaunt man in the white collar of a religious. His right arm was in a rough sling and he walked jerkily, shrugging off the solicitudes of his stocky sandy-haired companion. Behind them walked the servant, all slung about with bags and pouches and carrying a small wooden box upon his head.
Before the men reached the village palisades, they were greeted by several of the elders bearing the calumet. Auguste watched as the sandy-haired man spoke to them urgently, chopping at the air with his hands. Then he slipped away, the dog silent at his heels. At the edge of the forest, where the savages cut the trees for daily use, he unbelted the hatchet at his waist, testing the sharpness of the blade against his thumb. He paid no heed to the rat-a-tat-tat of the red-capped woodpecker nor to the paint-bright hummingbird that darted between the white bells of the convolvulus. He chopped wood until the buttery sun melted in the sky and the nerve-strings in his neck and shoulders sang in protest.
It was dark when he returned to the village. As he gathered with the others to eat, he learned that the visitor was a pastor with a mission upriver, many days’ travel away. He had come to the village once before and talked to the villagers of the white man’s Great Nanboulou, who had no body and in whose fire the wicked must burn for many, many moons. He had claimed himself the Nanboulou’s chosen instrument on earth. Now it seemed that he was powerless to call down that god’s powers to expel the evil spirits that plagued him. Weak with sickness, he travelled to Mobile in search of the pale-faced medicine man whose powers might prove stronger than his own.
As was customary, the chief of the village made accommodation for the priest and his companion in his own hut. When the pastor learned that there was a French boy living among the savages at the village, he asked that the boy be sent to him there so that he might report upon his progress to the commandant at Mobile.
At the threshold of the chief’s dwelling, Auguste hesitated. Only the elders of the village were permitted to enter without the chief’s express summons. Cautiously he peeped in. In the centre of the hut a cane torch burned, as thick around as a child, exhaling its black breath towards the roof. The silver-haired priest sat stiffly upon a pallet, propped against his wooden box, a book upon his lap. Across from him, his companion sprawled upon his stomach, picking at his teeth with a sharpened stick. A callused heel poked through the hole in his stocking.
The pastor looked up from his book.
‘Ah,’ he said, nodding. ‘Come. Come in.’
After months of hearing only the savage language, the French words came as a surprise. Auguste did as he was bid. He saw that the missioner’s left ear was torn, his cheek scored with half-healed gashes, and that the cloth that wrapped his arm was rusty with dried blood.
‘Do you have a message for the garrison, boy?’ The priest moved his arm and the pain showed on his face. ‘Anything that the commandant should know?’
Auguste hesitated.
‘At first harvest, Tunica warriors seized two squaws and took them as slaves,’ he said slowly, fumbling for the words in French. ‘The Ouma raided their village and broke the men’s heads.’
‘The usual savage caper, then. And the English? You have seen a white man?’
‘No, sir. You are the first.’
‘Is that so?’ The priest considered Auguste thoughtfully. ‘Then let us talk together a while. I am Père Jouvet. Perhaps you know of me, of my mission at the Nassitoches?’
Again Auguste shook his head. The priest pressed his lips together in a line.
‘You do well here, boy? You make headway with the savages?’ Auguste shrugged.
‘A man of few words. But you have mastered their language, have you not?’
Though the priest’s tone remained courteous, Auguste noted the pale flare of his nostrils, the tightening of his fingers in his lap. It would serve no purpose to anger him.
‘I listen carefully,’ Auguste said slowly. ‘And I watch.’
‘Good, good. A man cannot hope to civilise the savage unless he knows what he is up against, knows their language, shares their food.’
‘I don’t mind the food. The food is good.’
The priest frowned. His hand now lay open on his lap, palm upward, the forefinger lightly circling the pad of the thumb.
‘Do you know how I came to be injured? A young warrior of my mission desired his uncle buried in our church, though the dead man had never once set foot across its threshold. When I refused him, the warrior set upon me with arrows. One struck me here upon the ear, another in the arm. I tried to pull it out, but the head was stuck fast in the sinew and the stem broke off in my hand. It is there still.’
Auguste thought of the deer he had butchered the previous week. Where the arrow had struck the beast’s shoulder, its bloody flesh had been stuck with tiny shards of bone, like fishes’ teeth.
‘Do you pray to God?’ the priest asked.
The boy hesitated, then shook his head.
‘No, Father,’ he answered. ‘There is no church here.’
‘Not yet perhaps,’ the pastor replied. ‘But there shall be. There shall be churches all across this God-starved land. Until then you must worship God in the church of your heart. In the wilds of the forest it is easy to stray from the path of virtue, but remember this. The white man who turns his back upon the light of the Lord is no better than the idolatrous savage. Learn from God and not from your fellow man.’
The priest broke off, his shoulders racked by a fit of coughing. He gestured at Auguste as he struggled to regain his composure.
‘Some water, if you please,’ he croaked. ‘On the floor. A bottle.’
The stubble upon his chin gleamed white against the grey of his skin. Auguste crouched, squatting in the savage way. By the missionary’s pallet, there was indeed a leather water bottle, its belly worn shiny with use. Beside it a leather pouch lay open, its dark throat glinting with treasures. The flame from the cane torch caught the dull burnish of tooled gold upon the spine of a battered-looking book and, a little deeper in, the precise glint of glass. The tips of Auguste’s fingers burned. With his two thumbs he eased the cork from the neck of the bottle and held it out to the priest who drank deeply, closing his eyes.
‘I have learned things from the Ouma,’ Auguste said quietly as he moved his arm as he had been taught to raise the bow, in a single smooth arc. ‘About animals and birds. About plants.’
The priest lowered the bottle, belched quietly and, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, gestured to Auguste to return it to its place. Unhurriedly Auguste drew his hands from his pockets. The bottle was warm. Pushing the cork hard into the neck with his thumbs, Auguste thrust it into the open pouch and closed the flap.
‘The men of the Nassitoches worship symbols of the male phallus,’ the priest said. ‘But it is not the savage who grieves the Lord most deeply. The savage is rude and heathen, but there remains in him the grace of God’s creation, when man was naked and knew it not. Not so the white man, who knows the Lord’s commandments and breaks them daily with his drinking and his gambling and his abominable lechery. Why do you squat like that? Stand up like a man so that I can see you.’
Auguste scrambled to his feet, his fists deep in his pockets.
‘Your counsel is wise, Father
,’ he murmured.
‘And your coat is too small. You have become a man since you came here.’
Auguste shrugged. The priest let his hand drop back into his lap.
‘The warrior who wounded me did so because he could not countenance his uncle’s exclusion from the blessed kingdom of Heaven,’ the priest said quietly. ‘There is not one among the Canadian coureurs who would think of it. Now do you wish me to hear your confession?’
Auguste cast a wistful glance towards the door where the dog waited for him, its whiskered muzzle pale in the gloom. Then, withdrawing his hands very carefully from his pockets, he bowed his head and mumbled something about speaking ill of another and drinking brandy. When he had given the boy his penance, the priest lifted his hand, marking out a cross in the air with two raised fingers.
‘Lord, bless this Your humble servant. Make a sword of his will, that it might cut the sin like a canker from his heart, and set the shield of virtue in his hand, so that he might serve all his days as a valiant foot soldier in the service of Thy great name. Amen.’
Many moons were to pass before news reached the Ouma that the priest with the arrowhead in his arm had perished at Mobile. Auguste received the news with fleeting pity and not a little relief. The Ouma made fire with a dry stick spun briskly between the palms inside a hollowed branch of wood, as though they whipped milk for chocolate. He had feared that it would not be long before talk reached the mission at Nassitoches of the French boy who could call down fire from the sun at his pleasure.