The Pelican Bride (8 page)

He walked to the open window and leaned on the sill. “The fever came back so suddenly. No time to send for one of the priests . . . last rites . . . she’s gone now, gone, and it’s too late. I don’t know how to pray.”

“The Father already knows how you hurt,” Geneviève said around the knot in her throat.

He looked over his shoulder, despair clouding his eyes. “I told you, Father Henri never came. It’s too late.”

This was no time to argue over heaven, purgatory, and eternal damnation. “I meant your heavenly Father. Even Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died.”

Loisel frowned. “I don’t know what good weeping will do.”

Madame L’Anglois insinuated her pudgy little person between Geneviève and the widower. “Clearly there is nothing else for us to do here. We mustn’t interfere in spiritual matters we know nothing about.” She grimaced at Loisel. “Surgeon-Major Barraud will be here soon with Father Mathieu.” She gave Geneviève a hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”

But just then a loud male voice, overlaid with a child’s soprano and a third unidentifiable murmur, carried from the direction of the street. “I tol’ you this is a waste of time,” the speaker declared
in slurred tones as heavy footsteps clomped across the wooden portico. “If she’s got the fever again, all we can do is keep her comf’ble and wait it out.”

“Monsieur!” came Raindrop’s carrying little voice. “Wait! You’re going to miss the—” A loud crash was followed by confused voices, a string of vigorous curses, and Raindrop’s giggles. “I’m sorry, Father, but he’s so funny with his hat upside-down!”

Madame jerked open the door and gaped at the Indian child and lanky, black-robed Father Mathieu struggling to hoist a uniformed officer to his feet.

“Hey, Loisel!” bellowed the physician, a curly-haired fellow of some thirty or forty years—it was hard to tell, due to the black tricorn crammed down over his ears wrong side out. “Tell this black crow to let go! He shoved me down the stairs!” The officer attempted to dislodge his escorts.

Father Mathieu, red-faced with disgust, hauled Barraud to his feet. Raindrop ran past him up the steps and started to fling her arms around Madame, but the matron held her at a safe distance.

“Mercy, child, your hands are filthy! Wait here on the porch while I talk to Father Mathieu and the—” Madame paused, eyeing the swaying doctor—“Monsieur Barraud.” She stepped back to allow the men to enter as Raindrop dropped cross-legged onto the wooden porch. “I’m afraid you’re too late. Where is Father Henri?”

“With another family.” The Jesuit took Loisel’s hands. “When the child explained the situation, I came, thinking perhaps you wouldn’t mind the offices of a stranger. Where is your wife?”

Speechless, the poor man’s red-rimmed eyes watered again.

“Élisabeth’s body is here, Father.” Geneviève glanced toward the still form at the back of the room. “She died just before Madame and I arrived.”

Expression compassionate, Father Mathieu knelt by the body with a faint grunt of discomfort. Geneviève knew the heat and humidity had worsened the aches in his joints. He crossed himself
and closed his eyes. “We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy mercy, to have pity on the soul of thy handmaid; do thou, who hast freed her from the perils of this mortal life, restore to her the portion of everlasting salvation. Through Christ our Lord, amen.” Opening his eyes, he pulled a small brown vial from his pocket, uncorked it, and overturned it against a callused finger. He pressed his finger to Élisabeth’s forehead, chin, and both cheeks.

As the sweet aroma of the oil overpowered the odors of illness and death, Loisel uttered a choked sob.

“Doubt there was anything else I could’ve done,” the surgeon-major said, wandering over to peer at the deceased woman. He picked up her wrist, found no pulse, and dropped it. He gave Geneviève a charming if inebriated smile. “Would you like to get married, my dear? I have quite a neat little house next to the surgery.”

She stared at him, robbed of words. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said—”

“I know what you
said
. I mean, have you taken leave of your senses? My friend has just died, and this is—this is hardly the appropriate occasion for a marriage proposal!”

Barraud shrugged. “No time like the present, I always say. The pig who’s present gets the slops.” He grinned. “I hope you’ll keep me in mind. But you’d better hurry, because there aren’t many officers still unattached.” He turned to the priest, who had struggled to his feet. “Which reminds me, Father, it seems you and I’ll be accompanying Captain Lanier to parlay with the upriver Indians. A man of medicine and a man of prayer—all eventualities covered, eh?”

Geneviève’s outrage evaporated. Father Mathieu was leaving the settlement already? The priest was her friend, her protector. Why hadn’t he told her? Did he not trust her? “Upriver? This is very sudden, Father. When will you go?”

“As soon as provisions can be pulled together. We wait upon the arrival of the supply ship that was to follow the
Pélican
. She
should arrive in a few weeks.” Mathieu’s smile for Geneviève was apologetic. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“But, Father—!”

“I know you worry for your little sister, Ginette. Perhaps it will be best if neither of you makes any life-altering decisions while I am gone.” A smile tugged at the priest’s lips as his wry glance flicked to Barraud.

Geneviève couldn’t help returning the smile. “Little danger on that score, Father. But . . . I hadn’t realized you might take up a new mission so soon.”

The priest cast a sympathetic look at the grieving widower. “Father Albert and Father Henri are capable of tending the flock here. You know our order’s passion for evangelizing. Someone must go and tell the heathen the good news.” He didn’t meet her eyes.

Father Mathieu would not lie to her, but there was something he would not say in front of the others.

Barraud puffed out his chest. “Someone has to try to talk sense into the savages. The only law they understand is ‘Blood must be avenged by blood.’ Bienville says the British have been stirring the Indians in the north into raiding the southern villages.”

Geneviève nodded, wondering why Barraud would be chosen for such an important diplomatic mission. If she hoped to make sense of the undercurrents rippling below the colony’s surface, she had best begin to wade in a little deeper.

“Monsieur Barraud,” she said, “perhaps there is something I could do to assist you in preparing Madame Loisel for burial?”

Mitannu had been gone for six days, during which time Chazeh recovered from his fever and Nika’s bruised shoulder faded to a pale yellow. Camouflaging that with a judicious application of dye made from mashed and soaked sumac pods, she was able to join Kumala and the children for a swim in the creek.

Floating on her back in shallow water while the boys swam and splashed nearby, enjoying their squeals and shouts, she looked up at the soft clouds drifting overhead. Soon she would have to dress and return home to prepare the evening meal.

The water behind her rippled and sloshed, and a shadow fell across her face. She sat up, and as the water dripped from her ears, she realized the children had fallen into frightened silence. She turned.

Mitannu stood thigh-deep in the cold water, his arms folded across his big bronze chest. He was still painted for hunting, and he smelled like a week without a bath. She made herself meet his eyes.

Contempt froze his expression. “I have been gone for six days, hunting for the food in your pot, and come back to find you floating like a dead fish in the creek.”

She flinched, and Kumala, sitting on the bank nursing her baby, gasped. But at least he didn’t hit her.

Stung, Nika reached for her pride. “The work is all done. The boys and I just wanted a short—”

“I don’t want to hear excuses. You are the laziest woman in the village. I don’t know why my father thought an Alabaman, especially of the Kaskaskian village, would be suitable for the chief’s son.” When she didn’t answer, merely stared at him in resentment, he jerked his chin toward the shore, where a deer carcass lay on a litter. “Come and see the most valuable trophy I brought back.” He wheeled and sloshed out of the creek, cuffing one of the boys across the back of the head on the way past. Tonaw laughed, but she wasn’t at all sure the blow had been affectionate.

Nika slowly followed, avoiding Kumala’s anxious eyes. There was nothing her friend could do to help. When she stepped out of the water, Chazeh grabbed her hand as if to follow. “Go play,” she told him sharply, somehow sure that Mitannu had something unpleasant in mind. Chazeh reluctantly dropped her hand and plopped back down onto the bank. He was quickly absorbed in
chasing minnows. Relieved, Nika swallowed her apprehension and walked toward her husband, who was kneeling at the litter, riffling through the hunting bag she had woven last winter. It was one of her most beautiful designs, the fibers and colors carefully chosen, the dyes pure and strong.

She stood watching him, her hands loosely linked in front. He was a handsome man, his hair and skin healthy and his profile clean and strong. It was the custom of the Mobile clan for the men to pluck their beards, so his angular chin always seemed to jut cruelly.

She searched herself for pride in his strength. All she felt was a knot in her stomach.

He found what he was looking for and tossed the bag aside, then rose with a fluid movement. In his fist was some kind of dead animal.

She blinked. Not an animal. A clutch of human scalps. She looked up at Mitannu. The practice of scalp hunting was not unheard-of, though their clan did not often resort to it. The Mobile were a generally agrarian band, far enough south that the more warlike northern clans left them alone.

Mitannu shook the scalps at her like a dog with a bone. “For these, the French will pay in powder—great amounts of powder— ammunition for hunting.” He gave her a slow grin. “Do you recognize the beading and feathers?”

Horror-stricken, she couldn’t look away. Her head moved back and forth in negation, but of course she recognized the dressing of those hair locks.

Alabaman. Kaskaskian.

Tristan had managed to avoid Geneviève Gaillain for nearly a week, but it was time to return home. He had traded furs, hides, and corn for forged items like hooks, hinges, and knives; and he was bringing home a set of finely constructed cabinets, as well as
a table and four chairs the town carpenter had made from timber harvested from his plantation. He had been up since sunrise, loading the barque for the trip downstream. Her shallow hold was full of the provisions he had purchased at Massacre Island, and the new acquisitions from Fort Louis had been crammed into the cabin topside. Fortunately, slipping downstream would take half the time it had required to struggle twenty-seven miles up from the mouth of the bay.

He dumped the last case of farm implements onto the rear deck and paused to wipe his sweaty chest with the shirt he had stripped off a couple of hours ago and left hanging in the cabin window like a flag of surrender to the heat. As he surveyed the crowded deck, his thoughts wheeled in self-disgust. Why had he blurted out that ridiculous request for homemade bread? Where in the name of King Louis’s mistress was he going to put it? If he had kept the flour, he could have lived on it for months; as it was, he would be forced to store a quite unnecessary number of French loaves, which would undoubtedly spoil before it could all be eaten.

Perhaps he could give some of it to his Indian neighbors at the Mobile village, but they were going to think he had lost his mind. Or, worse, that he was trying to buy them off for some nefarious reason. He only prayed they wouldn’t see through his thin excuses to the truth.

The Frenchwoman had bewitched him.

No, he hastened to correct himself, the truth was that he had felt sorry for her. Sorry that she was going to have to marry one of the profane, woman-starved young cocked-hats that passed for soldiers here in Bienville’s soggy little outpost. Sorry that some tragedy had brought her across an ocean to this alien world.

He spread his feet for balance and looked up at the top of the bluff, where the fort’s timbered bastions marched on either side of the gate, its fleur-de-lis stirring in a desultory breeze. The whole fort was succumbing to rot, not two years after the raw timbers had
been seated into place. Mildew claimed the outer face of every wall, and every board was spongy to the touch. July had been mercifully dry, at least for the three weeks in the middle of the month, but August promised to lay a pall of heat, moisture, and mosquitoes.