Heartsong (53 page)

T
he next day it rained. Overnight the tramontane had kicked up, blowing in a long, continuous slide of gray clouds from the northwest. It wasn't a hard rain but it was steady. It rained all day, cooling the pavement and the brick and stone buildings, bringing in a fresh damp smell that made the town seem almost young. Suddenly the streets were filled with people, some with umbrellas, some without. It didn't seem to matter whether one got wet or not. The people walked with more bounce in their steps and more purpose. They went into shops and came out with their baskets brimming with good cheese, fresh fish, perhaps a new pair of stockings or some colored candles. Some men loitered on corners, smoking and laughing. It was already near the end of August and the rain was the first rain of summer.

Perhaps the demonstrators had decided to join their more unconcerned fellow citizens in enjoying the coolness that the rain brought, but the turnout at the Palais de Justice was remarkably sparse. Less than fifty people milled about Place Montyon, and they seemed hesitant, rudderless. The only speaker among them was an old man in an oilskin cape and sandals who warned them about the wages of sin and the wrath of God. It was unclear whether he was referring to the particular sins being discussed in the court of law or those vague sins that are committed every day
in an offhand way. Finally he demanded a cigarette from one of the demonstrators and ambled off down the street, smoking and growling. And the demonstrators, singly, in pairs, in small knots, began to drift away in all directions. They did not seem particularly angry today, or even reluctant to leave Place Montyon. And why should they? The rain had made Marseille young again.

T
he jurors were out for only two hours, and when they filed back into the jury box, their expressions were much as they were on the very first day of the trial—expectant, somber—but now battle-weary. The only difference was that each now had a recognizable face after the long days of trial—and presumably a family, or a lover, or an aging mother, a life that he was anxious to get home to. Many of them had worn the same dark suits since the trial began and were ready to put them away for a long time. Many of their families had suffered financially. All these things may have contributed to the brief deliberation—or they may have found that there was very little to discuss, that in the end the decision was remarkably simple.

“Will the defendant please rise.” It was not a question. Charging Elk got to his feet and stood tall, hands clasped in front of him. He had been used to hearing small sounds in the room—a chair squeak, a low whisper, a cough or the rattle of paper. Now it was silent. “How finds the jury?”

The foreman stood, and Charging Elk was surprised to see that he was the youngest of the men. His thin, almost frail body reminded Charging Elk of Mathias. But his voice was strong and clear. “We find the defendant guilty, as charged, of the act of murder, your honor.”

The abrupt reaction in the balcony made Charging Elk look around. There were whistles of disapproval and loud groans amid
a buzz of rapid conversation. Then he heard the familiar sound of the magistrate's wooden hammer banging on the desk.

“That will be enough!” he shouted. “We will have order in this court!” When the buzz died away, he said, “Let me remind you, this is a very serious procedure. If I hear another word, I will have the entire balcony cleared. You may mark my words.”

The chief magistrate stared into the balcony for a full minute until there was again not a sound in the room, except for the scratching of the journalists' pencils. Satisfied, he turned to the jurors and thanked them for their patience and good judgment. Then he conferred with his fellow magistrates for a moment before speaking again. “After discussing the matter, the court finds that the act was committed with provocation and without premeditation. While murder is never justified in a civilized society, we do believe that the two conditions constitute mitigating circumstances under which the crime was committed.

“Before passing sentence I feel compelled to point out that the man who now stands convicted of murder is not of a civilized race of people. It is clear that he does not hold the same beliefs and principles that contribute to an orderly, law-abiding society. We may deduce from the gibberish we heard yesterday that passes for language among his people and from the pattern of his behavior leading up to the crime, as the
procureur-général
so ably laid out, that he simply cannot conform to even the most elementary code of conduct—and therefore will always remain a threat to society.” The chief magistrate paused and removed his spectacles. His pale eyes searched out the prisoner s dock. “It is the judgment of this court that the convicted felon be removed to a highly secured place of detention where he will spend the rest of his natural life contemplating this most heinous crime.” He put the spectacles on and picked up his portfolio. “This court stands adjouned.”

S
t-Cyr sat for a moment and watched Charging Elk stand patiently as the two gendarmes fitted him with handcuffs and ankle bracelets. The heavy chain between them clanked and clattered on the floor with a din of finality that sent shivers up his back. So this is how it ends, he thought. This is the reality—the harsh sound of iron in the sudden serenity of the gloomy wood-paneled room. The room itself seemed cavernous now and almost unbearably empty as the last of the officials and spectators filed out.

St-Cyr didn't know how he felt, and that surprised him. He had been ready to rush out with the other journalists to write his column, which was due in the next day's
Gazette
, but his legs were curiously weak and he just felt empty of thought or emotion. Should he have felt good? His columns had transformed the trial from a mere scandal into a
cause célèbre
—all the people in the markets and cafés, on the quais of the Old Port, even in the salons of the
haute bourgeoisie
, were talking about the case. And he had been able to organize an outcry in the streets, in a somewhat devious but effective manner. And most important of all, Charging Elk had escaped the guillotine, which was a minor miracle—perhaps a major miracle in his case. St-Cyr, in spite of his background as a crime reporter, then a columnist, had attended only one other trial—that of an elderly woman accused of poisoning her husband—but he had been in Marseille long enough to know that a case such as this almost always ended with a severed head. The crimes were harsh in the port city but the punishment was even harsher. But the court had been lenient, perhaps in part because of his columns and the public outcry they engendered. So he should have felt good, if not ecstatic, about Charging Elks fate. But did he?

St-Cyr heard the scraping of chains on the wooden floor and he looked up and saw the gendarmes leading Charging Elk from the
room. Without thinking he called out,
“Adieu, mon ami! Bonne chancel
” But when the tall Indian hesitated for a moment to look down at him, St-Cyr knew why he didn't feel good. It was the eyes. The same eyes he had looked into when he first met Charging Elk in the cell of the Prefecture four years before. They had already gone dead.

St-Cyr sat at the long table until he no longer heard the scrape of the chains. His small triumphs had been as hollow and empty as he now felt. He had betrayed Charging Elk. The court had betrayed Charging Elk. St-Cyr sighed, but it came out more like a rueful gasp. Then he picked up his pencil and wrote:
I'm afraid the court had done the poor savage no favor by giving him life in prison over death. I looked into hid eyed ad he wad being led away in chains and I daw a living death. May his God forgive us all
.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

L
a Tombe was located in the extreme southwest of France
,
in the dry
hills behind Carcassonne, not far from Montsegur, which the Crusaders of Louis IX laid siege to, capturing the Cathars and burning them alive in a great bonfire. This was in 1244.

La Tombe itself had been a Crusader fortress. It had long fallen into ruin by 1866. At that time, the French government decided it needed a high-security prison to supplement Devil's Island, the penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. And so they built the prison on the foundation of the ancient fortress. The walls, made of stone, were three meters thick at the base, tapering to one meter thirty centimeters at the top. The walls ran 300 meters one way and 250 the other. Watchtowers stood at the corners of the walls, each with a small open window that looked down into the caked-earth yard. In the yard itself stood three identical long buildings connected at each end and in the middle by enclosed walkways. Tucked away in the corner by the gate was a smaller building with two white
columns supporting a triangular stone pediment, the only architectural feature within the walls that wasn't built on the square. Outside the walls, terraced vegetable gardens led down the hill to the small village of St-Paul-de-Fenouillet. But the inmates once they entered the prison would never see the gardens or the village again. They would not see anything but the blue sky, the sun, the clouds, and the rare bird.

La Tombe accepted only the worst criminals in France—serial killers, men who had murdered and dismembered their mistresses, a doctor who had poisoned five wives, a
chocolatier
who had disemboweled several boys in Nantes, a young vintner who had burned his father-and mother-in-law alive by dousing them in cognac and setting it afire—and of course the usual array of unrepentant cutthroats and thugs who had somehow managed to escape the guillotine. Unlike Devil's Island, La Tombe held no political prisoners to speak of—just a handful of men who preferred to think of their crimes as a particularly vicious form of anarchy.

The prison was officially named Samatan Prison but was nicknamed La Tombe for the obvious reason that nobody would leave there alive. Although it had been in existence for only twenty-seven years, by 1894 215 inmates had died within its walls, only forty-eight by natural causes.

It was to this prison that Charging Elk was bound on the night train from Marseille to Perpignan. He sat in a private compartment along with two guards from the Prefecture de Police and looked out the window into the darkness while the guards played cards. As he watched for occasional lighted farms and villages, he thought of the night train from Lyon or Vienne—he couldn't remember which—to Marseille. He remembered how Featherman exclaimed each time they saw a village or a chateau in the moonlight, how his own heart had jumped up when he saw a horse that looked like High Runner. And he remembered even further back to when the train
pulled out of the station in Gordon, Nebraska. His parents along with the others on the platform had sung their braveheart song to the young Indians. He had sat for a long time with his fathers breastplate on his lap—young, apprehensive, even fearful of what lay ahead. But he had been excited by the prospect of traveling far and seeing much. Although he didn't know exactly how it would happen, he looked forward to riding a horse, chasing buffalo, pretending to fight the soldiers before a large audience of
wasichus
. Best of all, he knew that he would return to Pine Ridge in two years with many of the American frogskins in his purse. He could get married and acquire many horses, a thought that had seemed so impossible on those winter nights out at the Stronghold.