The Pelican Bride (12 page)

7

F
ather, let us walk to the river.” Without another word, Marc-Antoine Lanier turned and took the steps down from the gallery in one leap. He strode across the marshy yard and headed away from the relative civilization of the fort and town.

Mathieu was left to follow as best he might, splashing through a stretch of lowland swarming with insects, dodging piles of wood left to rot. By the time he arrived, breathing hard, at Lanier’s chosen trysting place, his robe was wet to the knees.

Young Lanier waited, hands on hips, a faintly mocking smile on his lips. The only sound, besides the incessant drone of the mosquitoes, was the chugging of frogs and whir of crickets.

“Are you satisfied that we are alone?” Mathieu tucked his hands into his sleeves.

Lanier shrugged. “I don’t want my brother’s affairs to become public knowledge—particularly if they touch upon the reputation of my parents.”

He had been right to trust Marc-Antoine Lanier. “You were about to explain your brother’s motives in cutting off his connection to Bienville. Does he no longer hold ambition for building the colony for France?”

“I’m not sure he ever had any such ambition. We were both young when we left Canada six years ago with Bienville. I was fourteen, Tristan barely twenty. We were in it mostly for the adventure—Bienville was the one with the ambition. The plan was to map the coastline of the gulf, to track the rivers that fed it, find a settlement site, and stake France’s claim before Spain and England could get a toehold.”

“You helped to build the fort?” For three weeks Mathieu had been asking indirect questions about the beginnings of the settlement. But this was his first opportunity to question one who had actually been present with the commander from the outset.

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 orphanage 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.