“No one has it easier than a rich white man, that’s certain,” Jeannette muttered.
“Yes, but there’s few people in the world fortunate enough to be all three at once. The rest of us must make the best of who we are and what we have, and there’s no point in wishing for what can’t be. The sooner you learn to be practical, the happier you’ll be.”
“Why? Is being practical making you happy?”
“Not today,” Thérèse admitted. “But we can’t change the world, and being practical makes it easier to survive, happily or not.”
“Someday,” Jeannette said, “I’d like to do more than just survive.”
“So would I. But for today, it’s enough.”
* * *
Henry managed to avoid Thérèse for most of the day by displaying an intense interest in the workings of the steamboat. Fortunately none of it was pretense. It was fascinating to learn about the workings of the engine, and watching the great paddle wheel churn through the water held the same kind of attraction as staring at the soothing, repetitive flicker of a fire.
In the middle of the afternoon, Ben Cutler joined him on the deck, and they sat in the sunshine watching the riverbank slip by. The river was still lined with plantations and smaller farms, but increasingly they also passed stretches of thick woods, swampy cypress forests like the one Henry had become lost in after the battle.
“I like a day like this,” Cutler commented. “Reminds you that spring will come again.”
Henry nodded. After the damp, bone-chilling cold of all his previous days in Louisiana, this afternoon was nothing short of splendid. “It reminds me that summer will come again.” Truly, it was warm enough for June at Farlow Hall. He’d splashed barefoot through the stream above the west sheep pastures on colder days than this.
“That’s right, you’re from France itself. It’s much colder there, I suppose?”
“It depends on what part of France. It is a big country.”
“Smaller than this one.”
Henry forced himself not to bristle at the cheerful chauvinism in Cutler’s voice. “True. My family, they are from the north of France, and it is much colder there.” That much wasn’t a lie, as the Langevins were from Normandy.
“Do you mean to stay in America, or will you take your bride back to France?”
Henry gave a Gallic shrug. “We have not decided. We must get far from her father, but I do not know how France will be for my family, now that Napoleon is gone.” Now fiction and fact blended, for it was indeed too early to say how much of the fortunes of aristocratic families like his mother’s would be returned to them under the restored King Louis.
“If you do stay here, what will you do?”
“I do not know. I know a little of farming, but that does not mean I can farm here. And I can ride, shoot and fight with a sword. At books I am not so clever, in English or French.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that here. I can read—my mother taught me from her Bible—but my daddy never learned, and it didn’t stop him from being a good farmer. Of course, he’s not what you’d call a gentleman, and it seems to me you are.”
“But does that matter, here, to be a gentleman?”
“Only if you let it. If anything, it’d count against you on the frontier, or in the mountains where I’m from. But if you’re willing to work hard—and you know how to ride and shoot—it won’t make a difference at all.”
“You have mountains, in Tennessee?”
Cutler laughed. “You don’t know much about this country at all, do you? Yes, we do.”
“I love mountains.” Henry stared wistfully out at the monotonous country they were floating by and wondered how long it would be till he saw the hills and lakes of home again.
“Then you’d love Tennessee, at least the part I come from.” And for the next hour or more, Cutler extolled the virtues and beauties of his home state, its high ridges and steep-sided valleys, its thick forests and rushing streams. “There’s richer country,” he said in the end. “It’s not easy to farm such a rugged place. But none so beautiful, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere I had to farm with a crew of slaves. Begging your pardon—your wife seems to treat her girl well, but I can’t see my way clear to owning another soul.”
“We mean to free Jeannette, for the sake of the help she gave us,” Henry said quickly. “I do not want a plantation.”
“And yet you came to New Orleans.”
“And yet you live in Tennessee. There are slaves there, yes?”
“Yes. But I was born there.”
“And I did not know what I would think of slavery before I saw it. Sometimes, a thing sounds fine when one only reads of it, or hears it talked of, but when one sees it...” Henry let his voice trail off. It was a challenge to maintain his French accent in such a long conversation.
“That’s right.” Cutler nodded with firm approval. Their talk turned to lighter matters, and Henry found himself invited to join Cutler, Wilson and a few of the crew on an expedition to cut more wood for the ship’s insatiable engines and, perhaps, hunt a deer or two to improve the bill of fare for the next few days.
And so as the sun began to sink toward the horizon, Henry found himself dressed in Cutler’s spare shirt—a supremely comfortable garment—with a borrowed hunting rifle slung over his shoulder in addition to his own trusted pistol. As he stepped ashore, he looked over his shoulder to where Thérèse and Jeannette stood watching at the boat’s rail. Both smiled and waved, and Jeannette leaned up to whisper in Thérèse’s ear. Thérèse made an odd face, somewhere suspended between amusement and anger, and shook her head, but then said something that made Jeannette laugh aloud.
“Your lady needs to have a care,” Wilson commented. “It doesn’t do to let a slave grow too familiar. Or so I’ve been told by those with reason to know.”
So Cutler’s almost abolitionist sentiments weren’t universal among his Tennessee mountain brethren. “We mean to free her,” Henry said, as shortly as he could without dropping into his own accent.
Wilson shrugged. “Well, it’s your funeral.”
Henry didn’t respond beyond a sour smile. He was glad for this chance to step off the boat onto—well, he couldn’t quite call it dry land, but to have a bit more room for an hour or two. He’d hardly spoken to Thérèse all day, though she’d sent Jeannette to see to his wound. The girl had inspected it, pronounced that it was still healing well and tied on a new bandage with crisp efficiency. But as she’d stood to leave, she’d set her hands on her hips and said, “You made my sister angry.”
“She told you?” he’d replied, his eyebrows climbing in amazement. He wouldn’t have expected Thérèse to make a confidante of a thirteen-year-old.
“She didn’t mean to. I dragged it out of her. But it’s not as though she could tell anyone else.”
“That’s so,” he’d allowed.
“What you have to understand is that until a few months ago, Thérèse had an easy life. She thought it would go on that way, that she’d be married, that she’d be as grand a lady as someone like her can be. She doesn’t like to think she’s fallen down in the world.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve watched it all. Just—she can’t help being angry.”
“She has every right to be,” he’d said fervently.
At that Jeannette had smiled crookedly and left the cabin.
Later, when he’d passed Thérèse in the corridor, they’d both ducked their heads nervously, smiled without speaking and continued on their separate paths. They’d need to do better than that for the week or so they had left on the Enterprize before they arrived in Natchez. Wilson and Cutler believed them to be an eloping couple, and everyone else thought them husband and wife. And quarreling husbands and wives were common enough, but he had
no desire to be anything that memorable. Let them seem a quietly contented pair, not worth remembering and remarking upon.
The men of the Enterprize’s crew selected a tree to fell and set to work. Henry, Wilson and Cutler weren’t needed for that task, though he suspected they’d be called in for chopping up the wood once it was felled. But for the time being, they made their way along the edge of the river, striving to get far enough from the noise of the axe that there might yet be a deer or two about. It was still warm, though surely that would change when the sun set. Wilson and Cutler speculated on the likelihood of a storm within the next few days, as the usual end to such unseasonable weather, though they grew quiet as soon as the noise of the tree crew had faded into the distance.
Henry lagged a little behind. He hadn’t yet recovered his full strength, and yesterday had been fatiguing. But he held his rifle ready to shoulder and fire the instant he caught sight of a deer, and scanned the woods for the characteristic motion. He hadn’t had venison in over a year. Would the American kind taste as good as that deer they’d feasted upon in Spain? It would certainly be an improvement over the bacon, salt pork and dried beef of the last month or two.
Suddenly a strange, booming bellow echoed through the air, startling Henry from his hungry reverie. “Obadiah, look out!” Cutler shouted.
Just thirty feet ahead, Wilson stood paralyzed before a strange, monstrous lizard creature perched on a thick tree limb overhanging a channel flowing into the river. Henry saw in an instant that he had a better shot than Cutler. “Duck!” he shouted as he raised his weapon.
As soon as Wilson crouched down, Henry fired and struck the beast in the head. It fell from the tree, thrashing, and Cutler finished it with a second shot at close range.
Henry hurried forward, remembering just in time to say, “Mon Dieu,” instead of a thoroughly English Good God.
“Now, that must be an alligator,” Cutler said.
Henry stared at the strange, leathery skin and the jagged rows of teeth. He’d seen an engraving of an alligator in one of the schoolbooks he’d struggled to read as a lad, but ink hadn’t done the beast justice. This monster had to be at least a dozen feet long. “I was told,” he said, “that they hibernated in the winter, like a bear.”
“I reckon that one woke up today and thought it was spring,” Wilson said. He extended a hand, and Henry shook it. “You saved my life.”
“I had a clear shot. You would have done the same for me.”
“Still. Thank you.”
The silence between them stretched. Henry was searching his mind for a way to break up the awkwardness of it when Cutler scratched his head and said, “Can we eat this thing?”
Henry chuckled. “Is it better to take it back and have them laugh at us if it is bad to eat, or to leave it and endure their mockery if it is good?”
“If it’s good, they’ll never forgive us. Come, we’d best reload in case he has any friends in the trees, and then we’ll take it in turns to carry him back.”
Chapter Seven
The last thing Thérèse expected, even after hearing two shots in quick succession, was for Captain Farlow and his two new friends to return to the Enterprize laughing and bearing an alligator. But she made sure to stand near the front of the group on the deck as they carried the creature aboard and gaze at Captain Farlow with the shining eyes of an adoring wife whose husband had proven himself a successful hunter.
“Can a man eat this beast?” he asked of the group in general in that elaborate French accent he had adopted when forced to speak English in public.
“We surely hope so, since he was going to eat Wilson,” Cutler added.
Laughter rang out, and Captain Farlow flushed. Thérèse smiled, then wondered why she still liked him. After last night, shouldn’t she be obliged to fake her admiration of his smile and his eyes and the endearing way he had of turning bashful when she least expected it?
“Of course we can!” one of the crew called.
“Tastes like a chicken crossed with a fish,” another added.
At that Captain Farlow grinned, and Thérèse wished she could kiss him again. Clearly she had gone mad. She wanted to stalk away, to pace the deck until she felt herself again, but she made herself stand still, Jeannette hovering at her side, and listen to the whole tale of how they’d stumbled upon the alligator perched in a tree, and how the captain’s quick thinking and good shooting had saved Wilson’s life.
She did wander away, however, dragging a reluctant Jeannette, as soon as the men began butchering the beast. Later, as the smell of cooking meat began to perfume the air, Captain Farlow approached them diffidently. “Everyone seemed to think my wife would want to see my trophies,” he said in French.
“Trophies?” she replied in the same language.
“Here.” He opened his hand, and in the dim twilight Thérèse saw half a dozen alligator teeth.
Thérèse put a hand to her mouth, not sure whether to laugh or scream. “I’m not sure everyone here understands women very well.”
Jeannette leaned in to examine them. “Ooh,” she said with obvious appreciation. “What are you going to do with them? You could wear them around your neck.”
He laughed. “I thought I’d take them home to England to look at if I ever found myself doubting such a strange adventure had happened, but I suppose I can have one put on a chain and give it as a gift for you, if you think it would make such a fine necklace.”
“But that would be silly. I didn’t kill it.” With that Jeannette tossed her head and walked a few feet away to stand at the boat’s rail, peering out into the darkening sky.
Thérèse sighed. She didn’t want a private conversation with Captain Farlow.
“You have a remarkable sister,” he said in a voice pitched too low for Jeannette to hear.
“She is,” she replied, matching his tone. “But she’s so different from me I’m not sure what to make of her. She—she won’t let herself think about what happened with Bertrand. When I tried to speak to her about it, she pushed me away.”
“Let her do what she needs to, for now. In the army, I’ve seen men react to the same shock or fright a dozen different ways, and I can’t imagine women are any different. Some of the youngest ones think they must be the toughest.”
“She is that. Well!” She forced herself to smile brightly and changed the subject. “So, you’ve killed an alligator now. Did you ever expect to do such a thing?”
He laughed. “All I wanted was venison! I’m trying to reconcile myself to...chicken-fish.”
“If the cook has any sense, he’ll fry it in cornmeal. And maybe in a few days you’ll get a chance at venison.”
“I’ll be glad for fresh meat of any kind.”
“Mmm.”
They fell silent for a few minutes. The wind was beginning to stir from the west, cool and gusty with the promise of a return to more wintry weather. “We’ll have a storm by morning,” Captain Farlow said.
“You’re likely right.” She sighed. They’d been reduced to talking of the weather. “I think I owe you an apology,” she said.
He drew back and frowned down at her. “Whatever for?”
“I...I made last night into something worse than it was.”
“But my actions were unpardonable.”
“If they were, so were mine. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to fall asleep. And then—you were almost as asleep as I was, I think, when it started. It...I don’t think it was something you’d planned.”
“No. Not at all. It seemed like a dream at first.”
“It did for me, too.”
“Still. I shouldn’t have—”
“Captain Farlow. We will be spending at least another few weeks in each other’s company and quite possibly more. We cannot keep tiptoeing around each other as t
hough we’re made of eggshells. We’ll just not let ourselves be alone like that again, and...go on, somehow. You’ve apologized half a dozen times. Well, I forgive you. I won’t forget, but I’ll forgive.”
“I won’t forget, either.”
She knew he only meant that he’d be careful to keep his distance, but his voice, low and warm, made her remember his lips against hers and his hand on her breast. “Good,” she said, willing her voice not to shake.
“Thank you, Thérèse.”
* * *
The alligator meat fried in cornmeal proved tasty, but over the next several days Henry ate so much of it that he hoped never to be faced with its fishy chicken flavor again. The twelve-foot beast provided more than enough meat for the Enterprize’s small crew and handful of passengers as they crept along the great river’s looping bends on the eight-day journey to Natchez.
Henry divided his time between Thérèse and Jeannette and Cutler and Wilson. The affair of the alligator had forged a bond between them something like that of men who served together in combat, though he wished he could be honest about who and what he was. He grew weary of playing Henri Langevin, gentleman of Normandy seeking his fortune in the New World. As much as he liked the Tennessee men, it was always a relief to join Thérèse and Jeannette, with whom he had nothing to hide—or at least no more than he did every day of his life. Thérèse had somehow got hold of a French Bible and was drilling Jeannette in her reading. During these lessons he carefully sat just far enough away that it wouldn’t seem natural for Jeannette to turn to him instead of her sister when she needed help with an unfamiliar word.
His side healed enough that he no longer needed to bandage it, though it would take longer for the bruises to fade and for the muscles to stop aching with minor exertion. He slept alone in his little cabin, and if anyone noticed he wasn’t sleeping with his ostensible wife, no one was rude enough to remark upon it.
He never got a chance to study Captain Shreve’s maps and charts, but he did talk with Cutler and Wilson about the roads leading away from Natchez. He hinted that he might go to Mobile, where he could hope for a ship bound for France, but his friends had no experience or guidance to offer. They did, however, recommend the Natchez Trace leading northeast to Nashville in their own state as an excellent trail with regular inns. “Probably not as grand as you’re used to, but at least you won’t be asking your fine lady to sleep on the ground.” Once they reached Nashville, his new friends assured him, they could work their way eastward or northward to any number of ports where they might sail for France, though once they saw Tennessee they’d just as likely want to stay!
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