Hunting for the Mississippi

by Camille Bouchard

  What’s gotten into her?

  I’m about to run after her when another movement catches my attention. I’m surprised to see Hiens, the German freebooter, come out of the very same spot.

  He nods at me, spits into the bushes, then walks off, buttoning up his pants as he goes.

  19

  SEPARATION

  I’m taking nails out of the broken boards recovered from the wreck of L’Aimable with Lucien Talon and Henri Joutel. When we hear the distant echo of arquebuses, Mr. Joutel doesn’t even stop what he’s doing to mutter: “That desperado Moranget just can’t help himself with the Indians, eh?”

  “Do— Do you really think so, sir?” Marie-Élisabeth’s dad stammers. “Why then it’s a disaster.”

  “I knew it was coming. Moranget is a capable soldier, but he’s violent and reckless, too. He needs to be kept in check. Mr. De La Salle gives him too much of a free hand.”

  A Recollect catches up to us, his frock up over his ankles as he makes his way through a patch of thistles.

  “Lord Jesus! Our men are in danger,” he says to Henri Joutel.

  “The soldiers and officers under the orders of Captain Beaujeu are gathering over there!” shouts a sailor. “Look!”

  “Don’t do that!” shouts De La Salle in the distance. “No reprisals, no attacks! Adopt a defensive position, no more. We shall wait for our men to return.”

  “If they return,” Henri Joutel murmurs.

  But they do come back. Although not before an hour has passed. Moranget and two of his soldiers—one of whom is seriously wounded—reappear, looking both pathetic and angry. They are furious at the Savages.

  “The wretches killed two of our men!”

  “They had the insolence to haggle over what they stole from us.”

  “We had to order them to compensate us.”

  “They accused us of kidnapping, tying up, and slitting the throats of up to three of their warriors.”

  “But we weren’t taken in by their lies.”

  “They were very aggressive.”

  “We had to defend ourselves.”

  Mr. De La Salle is not harsh enough with his nephew for many people’s liking. His actions have, after all, put the whole colony in danger from the Natives. I sense the disapproval when I head over to Jean L’Archevêque with two moorhens I’ve just killed for him. He had promised me a farthing for them. His circle of friends—the Duhaut brothers, a man by the name of Liotot… and the freebooter Hiens—are chatting with each other, without paying me the slightest bit of attention, as usual. To be honest, I’m not sure they even notice me.

  “That swine Moranget needs a musket ball to the head,” complains the older Duhaut brother.

  “Last night I dreamt I planted my axe in that thick skull of his,” laughs Liotot. “I’ve never slept as well. And if I ever get the chance, I wouldn’t think twice about—”

  “Keep your voice down!” one of the Duhauts interrupts. “We have an onlooker.”

  He nods in my direction, then continues chatting with his brother.

  “Isn’t that the little moron that hit you with the pulley?”

  Pierre Duhaut turns his hard-as-nails face around to look at me. There’s contempt in his glare, but less than I was expecting.

  “It is the same miserable little wretch. But he was springing to the defence of his sweetheart, after all. He might have the muscles of a mollusc, but at least he’s brave. And I’m sure he knows when to hold his tongue, doesn’t he? He wouldn’t like anyone to grab hold of his mother, would he? And my word, she’s a fine-looking woman!”

  When I hear the veiled threat about my mom, I stand as tall as I can. I hunt around in my head for a suitable reply, one that will persuade this miserable lot never to lay a hand on my mom. An ultimatum with threats of retaliation? A plea to show leniency toward a poor widow? The sobs of an orphan who also lost his little brother? But nothing seems right. Strangely enough, it’s Hiens who comes to my rescue.

  “No need to threaten the boy or bother the mother,” he says, giving me a look that’s impossible to pin down. “He’ll know to keep his tongue. Especially since we haven’t done a thing. We’re just venting our frustrations, that’s all.”

  The younger Duhaut brother continues to look me up and down for a moment with a mix of suspicion and menace, but the others quickly lose interest. Jean L’Archevêque ruffles my hair as he takes the moorhens. I grunt my displeasure and pluck the farthing out of his other hand.

  When I turn my back on the group to walk away, I can hear Hiens with his thick German accent.

  “He’s no snitch,” he says. “He won’t go shooting his mouth off. I’ve already seen for myself how discreet he can be.”

  * * *

  By mid-March, the two rival factions on our expedition are now completely separate. Infighting hasn’t broken out as Henri Joutel once feared, but more than one hundred of us have decided to return to France on Le Joly.

  “Captain Beaujeu will tell the king what a failure our mission was,” says a distraught Recollect. “May God forgive him his lies.”

  “He claims we will never find the mouth of the Mississippi,” worries a second priest.

  “Wait till you see the look on his face next year, when we send back a report from a thriving colony right in the heart of the territories the Spanish lay claim to,” scoffs Moranget.

  In the meantime, I can see Mr. De La Salle in the distance, along with Henri Joutel and the marquis de La Sablonnière, trying to convince the soldiers to keep their oath. We need them more than ever now to defend us from the hostile Natives. But, alas, the slanders and malicious gossip surrounding Mr. De La Salle have done their work: the insurgents can no longer be persuaded to stay.

  “Perhaps that’s why the ship was sabotaged,” suggests one of De La Salle’s lackeys. “Lose enough food and use that as an excuse to return home.”

  Being separated from one third of our group might have been cause for celebration had it included the most rotten elements. But unfortunately that’s not the case. Upstanding men—officers, royal soldiers, and tradesmen—are leaving on Le Joly, but hardworking men too, who have had their ambition cooled. Some families—vital to the colony’s survival—leave too, including women and children. The desperadoes remain, like the Duhaut brothers and L’Archevêque, Hiens the freebooter, Liotot, Moranget, and others, not to mention all the incomp… all the less competent workers, let’s say. If poor Mom is still looking to find a man to marry, she must be sorely disappointed. But, of course, this is the type of thing she and I never discuss.

  Fortunately for the colony, the Talon family and six adult women are staying, my mother among them. Apart from Isabelle Talon, only one is married: Barbier’s wife. The couple were keen to continue the adventure together.

  We’re even happier because she’s pregnant. Although that’s still a source of conflict: Barbier’s wife has her eye on the royal privileges the Talons have already laid claim to for little Robert, who was born at sea.

  “We hadn’t reached our destination,” the Barbier woman repeats, “which means that the boy didn’t come into this world in the colony. The seigneury promised by His Majesty belongs to the child I will have.”

  Mr. De La Salle’s problems aren’t over, by the sound of things.

  PART IV

  Royal Land

  20

  HUNTING

  FOR THE MISSISSIPPI

  There has still been no official sighting of the mouth of the Mississippi, but the soldiers have gone, only half the ships we set off with remain, and the Native tribes are growing increasingly hostile, so Mr. de La Salle has decided to build a fort using debris from L’Aimable. We shall call it Fort Saint Louis.

  I have work to do, but whenever I get the chance I try hard to follow Marie-Élisabeth around without her knowing. It didn’t take me lon
g to discover that unknown to her parents, two or three times a week whenever she goes to pick vegetables or wash clothes by the river, she hides away. She hides either in the tall grass in a meadow beside our camp, in a kind of cave created by a huge overhanging rock, or in a thicket of pine trees a little further away. I would worry for her safety because of the threat from the Natives… if Hiens weren’t with her each time.

  I know what’s going on between them for the quarter of an hour they spend hidden away together. I might even feel jealous. But I know all too well that Marie-Élisabeth derives no pleasure from these secret encounters. If she did, she would be glowing every time she walked back from them. But more often than not she’s crying. Or in a rage. Or her face is impossible to read.

  How is the freebooter holding her in his power like this? How is he convincing her to give herself to him?

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should speak to Mr. Talon about it. I’m worried about what might happen. But I don’t think I’m helping Marie-Élisabeth by continuing to keep the promise I made her. Keeping quiet about what I know no longer seems the right thing to do. But at the same time, who should I talk to? A Recollect priest? Henri Joutel? And how would Hiens react if he found himself accused of repeatedly raping an eleven-year-old girl? Wouldn’t he take revenge on us? Or wouldn’t the monsters that he hangs around with?

  * * *

  Fort Saint Louis is quickly taking shape. It must be said that it’s not particularly sophisticated. We put up the main building at the top of a mound that would make an attack by the Natives more difficult—but not impossible. Mr. De La Salle lives there along with a few lucky men from his entourage and the Recollect priests. Then there’s a house for the women and children, two more for the soldiers and workers, a stable, a warehouse, and a chapel next to our leaders’ central building.

  But these buildings of mud, straw, and fodder aren’t enough to house everyone. Some men are building huts out of buffalo pelts to shelter from the bad weather.

  Sentries guard the four corners of our fort at all times. They have orders to shoot any Natives on sight. Everyone is gripped by fear.

  After Le Joly left with at least one hundred twenty settlers who were hostile to Mr. De La Salle, we might have thought that peace would settle over those of us left behind. No such luck! Because of our precarious predicament and the constant threats we face, discontent is growing.

  For heaven’s sake! Why can’t some people get it into their heads that we’ll first have to roll up our sleeves and work hard before things improve?

  “We captured the deserters, sir.”

  Henri Joutel presents René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle with two men who fled the fort to strike out alone. They are pitiful. Their week-long stay in the forest has tested them to the limit. They are filthy, famished, thirsty, exhausted, and covered in mosquito bites.

  Perhaps they wanted to go live with the Natives. One of them has fallen in love with a Native girl, I hear. Perhaps they reckoned on finding the Mississippi themselves, and planned on heading up it to the Canadian colonies before taking the first ship back to France. No one explains what they were thinking to us. They are tried behind closed doors.

  “The verdict is in!” Moranget declares as he sits down among us that same evening by the fire. “The ringleader will be hanged tomorrow for desertion. Right there on that tree. You’ll all be here to see it—a reminder of the fate that awaits traitors working against His Majesty’s will. The second deserter has wholeheartedly repented and our leaders have chosen to be lenient. Nonetheless, he will have to sign an agreement to serve the king, right here in this very land, for ten years.”

  “Time we left once and for all and started looking for this Mississippi everyone’s talking about,” a man murmurs a little too loudly.

  “And so we shall!” Moranget declares, for once not flying into a rage whenever he hears someone say what Mr. De La Salle should do.

  He’s no doubt thrilled at the thought of watching a man be executed tomorrow; he hardly ever puts his hand on the shoulder of the person he’s talking to. He seems to be in top form all right.

  “Any man who, like you, wants to see some action will soon be in his element,” he continues. “Our leader has asked me to inform you that in a few days some fifty of us will be leaving Fort Saint Louis for La Belle. We will sail along the river until we find the Mississippi Delta and can at last begin our great sacred mission.”

  The shouts that greet the announcement seem to me to be more relieved than happy. I am hoping for only one thing: that Hiens the monster is not one of the men left behind at the fort. Or any of the thugs he hangs around with.

  * * *

  For once, God answers my prayers. Or maybe it’s my little brother the angel that I now pray to every day. Either way. When Mr. De La Salle leaves Fort Saint Louis with fifty men in five canoes to meet up with La Belle, the dastardly Hiens, Duhaut, Liotot, and L’Archevêque go with him.

  Marie-Élisabeth’s attitude completely changes from one day to the next. Without turning back into the cheerful little girl she was before, she begins to smile again and use sentences more than three words long. We can all feel how much calmer she is. If ever I needed proof that the time she spent with Hiens was against her will, now I have it.

  Lucien and Isabelle Talon, without really understanding why their daughter has been so completely transformed—“It must be puberty,” he father suggests—are delighted to see her smiling again and showering her younger siblings with affection.

  “She had her first period,” her mother agrees. “It’s bound to be playing a part. I explained to her that—Oh! You’re still here, Eustache. I thought that you’d gone back to Delphine.”

  Even those closest to me sometimes manage not to notice me.

  And so we spend quite a nice spring together, even though life at Fort Saint Louis isn’t easy. We need to till the soil to grow crops, and Henri Joutel is set on improving our makeshift buildings. I’m appointed to help build an oven away from our quarters.

  “Joutel is scared of fire,” a cook grumbles. “He should be more worried about those Indians killing a poor old baker all by himself away from the fort.”

  Weeks pass with no news of Mr. De La Salle.

  “He must have found his river and headed up it,” ventures a man by the fire one night.

  “Or he’s dead, killed by the Savages,” says another.

  “If he did, De La Salle must be halfway to Europe by now, with us stuck here,” says a third.

  “No way, birdbrain. This colony idea is his dream, his—”

  “Yeah, yeah, his utopia. De La Salle’s a madman, a crank. You don’t need to be one of those Indian witch doctors to see that.”

  “Ssh! You’ll hang if Moranget hears you.”

  “Let him hang! His uncle’s mad. I’ll say it and I’ll say it again.”

  “Then why don’t you go tell Henri Joutel?” asks Lucien Talon. He’s not serious, but his voice is as calm as ever. “He’ll be overjoyed to hear everything we’ve done has been in vain and that we should all take the next boat back to France.”

  People laugh, but there’s grumbling, too. Everyone knows we’re off to a bad start, and some have lost faith. And I must admit that the more I understand what’s at stake here, the more I find out about the problems we face, the more I too feel like giving into discouragement. But whenever I look at Mom and see the tiny flicker of hope in her eyes that keeps her going, that works hard to convince her we didn’t leave behind her world of beggars for nothing, that tells her we’re trying to build a new life and a happy future, well, then I take a step back. I think to myself that I have no right to destroy the only thing that helps her put up with our fate, that allows her not to feel guilty about dragging me all the way across the ocean and into the dream of an explorer who has—perhaps—lost his mind.

  Out of
love for my mother, out of the friendship we have with the Talon family, out of my love for Marie-Élisabeth, I want to believe in a French colony in America.

  I want to believe in Fort Saint Louis, Louisiana, and René-Robert Cavelier De La Salle.

  21

  SAVAGES AND A SNAKE

  “Indians! Indians! The Indians are attacking!”

  The alarm is sounded early enough for us to take refuge inside the fort. When I go over to Mom, she’s one of the volunteers wetting the roofs of our homes with buckets of water. In case of flaming arrows. But a few shots later, the threat has passed. The Natives weren’t too set on war today.

  “Where’s the Big Man?”

  The former helmsman of L’Aimable, who had preferred to continue on the adventure with us rather than go back with Beaujeu, had been right behind me three minutes ago.

  “He was with me,” I tell Barbier. “We were out at the oven and—”

  I don’t finish what I’m saying. Instead I run out of the fort.

  “Eustaaaache!” shouts my mom behind me.

  “Wait!” Barbier cries after me. “There might be more Indians close by! Come back!”

  I pretend not to hear.

  “Staaaache!”

  Even Marie-Élisabeth can’t stop me… although it’s so great to hear the concern in her voice!

  I’m very fond of the Big Man. He’s never treated me like a kid. He put up with me beside him the whole time when he was at the helm of L’Aimable. If he’s in danger, I want to be the first to help.

  “Eus… Eustache…”

  “Big Man!”

  The helmsman is sprawled on the ground, half in the grass and half on the sand. His skinny legs, mixed in among the grass, make him look even scrawnier than usual. I lean over him. The first thing I look for is the wound. Where did they get him? Was it an arrow or a—

  “Look out!”