Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (29 page)

Madame Doucet sobbed quietly to herself as they passed the place that had been her home. Elise wanted to turn away as they came near her own holdings, but she forced herself instead to look closely. How desolate it was, in the semidarkness, with nothing more than a pile of dead coals and ash where the house and barn had been; the poultry run was empty, the pastures sere and gray. It made her ache for the pride she had taken in her ownership, for the plans for a prosperous future she had nurtured so carefully. She had been so sure of herself, so positive that if she were careful and worked hard enough disaster could never befall her again.

It was fully dark when they saw the light. Shining like a beacon high in the sky, it was the eternal fire kept burning in the Temple of the Sun that crowned the highest mound of the Grand Village. It leaped and wavered, beckoning them with bright orange promises of warmth and food and rest. The pace of the column picked up. The warriors straightened. The smells of woodsmoke and food cooking wafted on the cool air. A messenger had been sent out earlier to announce their coming; they would be expected.

Minutes later they sighted the cook fires of the Great Sun at the apex of the second highest mound and those of the other Sun families lower down, clustered around the mound at ground level. The glow of fires gleamed through cracks in the walls of the huts, through the doors that were opened as people went in and out, watching for them. Then they saw the great bonfire in the middle of the ceremonial ground that marked the center of the village, an enormous blaze that consumed whole trees and sent sparks spinning upward to the heavens. Dogs began to bark. Then came a cry as they were discovered. From every thatched hut and hovel, the Indians poured, shouting to each other, jubilant at the safe return of the men with Reynaud, known as Hawk-of-the-Night, leading them. The column rode into the circle of the fight cast by the huge fire and, surrounded by the Natchez, came to a halt.

Hands touched Elise’s habit skirt, tugging, pinching, assessing as the faces of their owners turned up to stare at her. Bland, curious, distrustful, disdainful, they pressed in upon her. Ahead of her, Reynaud was being greeted like a conqueror or lost son. Slowly he drew away from her, the distance between them widening. She heard Madame Doucet protesting and turned to see her being pulled from the saddle and tumbled onto the packed earth of the ground. Eager fingers caught at her, too, dragging her down among them. Her hair was touched, pulled. She was pushed this way and that, though she stayed stubbornly on her feet.

Did she imagine it or was there a shouted order from Reynaud? She could not be certain in the cacophony of cries, thudding drums, rattling gourds, and shrilling cane flutes. The women converged on her, giggling, pulling her between them over the ground toward a hut that lay behind the second highest mound. She stumbled on the uneven ground, ducking under a low-hanging tree limb, nearly falling as she was jerked along. In a sudden surge of temper, she struck out at the hands that dragged at her, wrenching back away from them. A big Indian woman who was hauling her by her arm reached out to slap her, a stinging blow, before she grabbed a handful of her loosened hair and pulled her onward.

A massive shape loomed ahead of them, a hut. They ducked to enter through the small door that was no more than four feet tall. Inside, it was seen to be a large structure some thirty feet square with a fire blazing in the center, surrounded with cooking pots, and a small hole, half-covered by a woven cane flap, in the cone-shaped ceiling through which the smoke escaped. The hut had no windows; light was supplied by the fire and by two or three small clay lamps made of open pots with burning wicks floating in herb-scented bear oil and hung in a netting of plaited ropes from the beams. The floors were covered with woven mats. Wide benches piled with furs lined the walls, serving both as beds and for seating. Mercifully, the hut was empty, for the instant she was inside the women began to strip her clothes from her.

She fought them, but she was so outnumbered that it was of no use. In short order, she was naked. They stared at her in frank appraisal as she stood gilded in firelight with stands of her honey-brown hair veiling her pale skin. One woman tweaked the nipple of her breast, then smoothed a hand along her hip, apparently making some disparaging remark at its slenderness compared with her own. The others laughed, then half pushed, half led Elise toward the center sleeping bench. They pressed her down upon it and covered her with furs, then with what appeared to be an admonition to stay where she was, they trooped out and slid the door into place over the opening.

It was warm in the hut, even stifling with the thick pall of smoke that hovered in the peak of the roof. She lay still, feeling her chill flesh absorbing the heat. She stared up at the blackened ceiling; at the undersides of what appeared to be woven cane mats; at an assortment of dried herbs that released their scent in the hot air; and at a motley collection of weapons, animal skins, bear and panther claws, and strips of leather that hung from the beams. What would happen next, she did not know, nor could she summon the will to care. The light from the crude lamps flickered, casting odd shadows on the high walls. The bed furs grew soft in their warmth. She closed her burning eyes.

11

THE WOMAN MOVED about the hut, kindling the fire, starting a pot of corn gruel to boil, bringing in a load of fragrant cedar boughs to place under the benches to repel fleas. Reynaud pretended that she was not there, as he had been taught to do in order to allow her privacy for her tasks while guarding his own, doing it so completely that he was scarcely aware of her presence.

He lay on his side covered to the waist by the bed furs with his head propped on one elbow. A faint smile on his mouth, he watched Elise where she lay between him and the wall. She was turned toward him on her side with only her head and one hand out of the covers. Her eyes were closed and she breathed with the deep and even rhythm of sleep.

There were blue shadows under her eyes, her cheeks were windburned, and her lips dry and slightly cracked from the cold of the days on the trail; still, he thought her lovely. She had not stirred when he joined her in the early morning hours, nor did it seem that she was disturbed by his presence. At least once toward dawn, as he had reached out to her, she had turned without waking him to allow him to fit her into the curve of his body. He found that unconscious acceptance oddly endearing and even promising.

The palm of her hand lying open and lax on the fur was as bruised as the skin under her eyes. Silently he damned once more the man who had harmed her. But he could not escape the fact that a part of the blame was also his. He had been so intent on intimidating her to the point of acquiescing in his scheme for her that he had not thought what effect it might have on the others. They had taken her for a slave, one only incidentally his woman, and Path Bear had behaved accordingly.

It would be useless to deny that he had taken a certain satisfaction in forcing her to do his bidding. That had been before she had risked becoming lost in the forest in order to escape him; before he had seen her valiant efforts to defend herself from his Sun cousin, Path Bear; before he had seen the terror that she tried so bravely to hide as he had spoken of punishment. All he had felt then had been sick self-loathing. Knowing what she had been through with the brutal son of hell to whom she had been married, how could he have exposed her to such a thing again?

It did not bear thinking of. His eyes dark with pain and shame, he leaned to press his lips for a brief instant to the discolored flesh of her hand.

Elise’s lashes quivered, fluttered upward. She stared at him for a long moment, aware of a tingling in her palm and a faint soreness, though not of the cause. Abruptly she recoiled from him, coming up against the side of the hut.

“Gloating?” she asked, her voice tight.

He blinked at the accuracy of her insight, but replied with ease, “Why should I do that?”

“I believe you said once that the idea of making me your slave had appeal. You should be happy that you have your wish!”

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that I am, though I prefer not to look at it that way.”

She glanced away from the bright light in his gray eyes, her features grim, “What other way is there? I wasn’t brought here last night by your women, stripped naked, and put into your bed because I am an honored guest.”

“Not my women,” he said dryly.

“They obeyed your order.”

“I asked them to see to you. Unfortunately, Natchez women have ideas of their own.”

“Then you did not expect to find me here?” Color rose in her cheeks as she made a small gesture indicating the bed.

“It was a delightful surprise.”

A soft giggling, of mirth suppressed too long, greeted this sally. Hearing it, Elise pushed herself up on an elbow to look over Reynaud’s broad shoulder. An Indian woman knelt by the fire less than ten feet away with her hand over her mouth and her black eyes shining with glee. A frown snapped Elise’s brows together, then as quickly as it had risen her anger faded. “Little Quail! Is it you?”

Little Quail, the Indian woman who had been sold to her husband as a slave by her parents, the person closest to a companion that she had found in this new world as they had shared the misery of belonging to Vincent Laffont. The Natchez women seldom ventured far from their villages and so Elise had seen the other women only twice since Little Quail had returned to the Natchez after Vincent’s death.

“I am sorry, Madame Elise, truly. I tried to be quiet, but it is so funny to think that you did not wish to be in the bed furs of Hawk-of-the-Night, he that most young women would sell themselves to please, and that finding you there this great warrior chief let you sleep!”

Reynaud shifted, turning a lazy grin on the Indian woman. “You have a twisted sense of humor.”

“Do I offend you, great one?” she asked, then anxiously repeated the question in the Natchez tongue.

“I may forgive it if you prepare my breakfast well,” he answered, stretching.

The woman sent a glance of melting mischief to Elise. “Oh, but how could you not desire to give pleasure to such a generous man?”

“Easily!” Elise snapped. “He is conceited, overbearing, and takes far too much for granted.”

“Then you must change him.” Little Quail gave a wise nod.

“I fear the effort is beyond me. But, tell me, have you been well?”

“For myself, yes. The last time you saw me, it was as a wife; now I am a widow.”

Elise remembered with a faint shudder speaking to Little Quail’s husband the morning of the massacre, remembered her conviction that he had meant to be the one to kill her or perhaps take her prisoner. “A widow? How did it come about?”

“He met his death in battle as he would have wished, dying with the great warrior chief that Hawk-of-the-Night must replace.”

Elise sat up straighter, clutching the black bear fur to her chest. “I am sad for your sadness.”

“It is over,” Little Quail answered, her tone subdued.

There was stoic endurance on the young woman’s square, piquant features and also a hint of reserve. It seemed as well to change the subject.

“I saw none of the French women and children when we arrived last night. I must ask you if they are all right? Have they been well treated?”

Little Quail looked away as if it was necessary to stir the pot of gruel. “They are well enough, those who are willing to work. It has not been good, I fear, with those who are used to being idle. For a woman of the Natchez, a willingness to work is the greatest virtue. There is no excuse for shirking.”

It was easy for Elise to imagine some of the women she had known finding the life of Indian women hard. Like so many of the French, the women had been led to believe the tales of riches pouring from the ground here in the Louisiana country, tales of the great wealth that could be amassed with little effort. They had expected a place where they would need to do little except to spend the treasure that would pour into their laps. Finding the promises false, they had sunk into indolence, anyway, their greatest exertion being to harry their few slaves to perform the tasks necessary for their comfort. Such idleness, along with their lack of physical strength, their pride and stubbornness, would doubtless have brought the scorn of the Indian women down upon them.

“There was news of a young boy who was said to have been killed in the funeral rites for a Sun child,” she ventured.