by Beth White
Tristan leaped to his feet. “Bienville, if you execute payback to the wrong clan, you’ll start a war you won’t be able to end. Listen to me—make certain of the facts before you act.”
Bienville pinched the bridge of his nose. “The war is already begun! Lanier, they murdered your brother, not to mention another of our priests!”
That just might be true, though Tristan prayed not. If Marc-Antoine lay dead, somewhere in the Alabama forest, he knew not how he would survive. Still, his gut told him the Koasati were innocent. Somehow he had to prove it.
“Let me take Deerfoot and these three boys, plus another man of your choosing. Give us two weeks, and we’ll discover who’s really behind the massacre. If we haven’t returned by then, launch your attack and I’ll stay out of the way.”
“Or what?” snarled La Salle. “You’ll go renegade and join your precious Indians against your own people?”
Tristan fought to keep Bienville’s fractured attention. “Commander, my wife is here! I may be disgusted with the lot of you, but I’m no traitor.” More calmly he added, “You know that’s true, no matter what happened between us.”
Bienville stared at him, indecision in every line of his body. But there was also a flicker of guilt. “The irony is inescapable. You blamed me when I didn’t pursue Sholani’s captors.”
Tristan nodded. “Fair enough—but this is different.” He pressed for compromise. “I know you don’t want all-out war with the Indians, not with the British hoping we’ll annihilate ourselves in the process. Listen, keep one of the boys hostage here, as a sign of good faith.” He glanced back at Fights With Bears. “His father is the Koasati chief.”
Fights With Bears surged to his feet. Though he didn’t understand French, he clearly sensed the conflict in the room. Proudly he hit his chest with a fisted hand. “The Koasati are afraid of nothing,” he said, addressing Tristan. “My father bids me follow you into battle.”
Tristan held Bienville’s gaze. The commander had a fair command of the Alabama tongues himself. Surely the Indian boy’s courageous words must sway him to common sense.
Châteaugué grabbed Fights With Bears’ arm. “You cannot trust this savage, Bienville! If we wait to go on the offense, they may bring the violence to us here, gathering up all the other clans along the way.” He glared at Tristan. “Lanier is a traitor, and don’t forget he’s trained to negotiate with words. You ought not trust him either.”
Julien had been so sure that he’d killed the proverbial two birds with one stone. Lanier’s escape now made everything so much more complicated.
Bienville had assigned him the task of inspecting the powder magazine and delegating the inventory of weapons in the event that the garrison went on the defensive. What the commander had not agreed to was calling out an immediate detachment to march north and attack the Alabama nation. Apparently Lanier was to be granted his two weeks to obtain proof of the Koasatis’ inculpability in the murder of three of His Majesty’s men and a priest. Bienville might be an erratic and gullible fool, but no one could deny his loyalty to old allies. Any other garrison commander would have had Lanier hanged as a traitor, rather than allowing him to keep one of the largest tracts of land in His Majesty’s southern colony.
At least there was incontrovertible evidence that Father Mathieu had perished, and with him documentation of Lanier’s legitimation and claim to their father’s title. Now all he had to do was secure his rival’s demise—again—and the gates to the de Leméry fortune would once more swing open before him.
As though it were a symbol of that latent fortune, he pulled open the heavy iron-bound door to the powder magazine. Before him marched row upon row, ceiling high, of dry powder kegs. It was a goodly store and would provide plenty of ammunition in case of siege or attack—but should Bienville decide to fling their small garrison into Anglo-Indian war, it would be depleted soon enough. And if some natural disaster such as fire or flood destroyed the magazine . . .
Julien allowed himself a secret smile. There was no limit to what the commander would pay the one who possessed the resources to replace it.
For two days Geneviève had barely had time to mourn Father Mathieu. She had taken it upon herself to provide meals for Ysabeau Bonnet, still incarcerated in the guardhouse—and in the process to make sure the various young cadets assigned to prevent her escape did not sneak in to “comfort” the girl with their unwanted caresses. The commander, having now much more pressing concerns than the madwoman in his prison, seemed not to care whether Geneviève fed her or not.
Under the circumstances, she hadn’t the temerity to approach him with her suspicions regarding Ysabeau’s treatment at the hands of his men. But she found to her surprise that her agreement to tend the now deceased Surgeon-Major Barraud had purchased a certain amount of favor in the eyes of the commandant. And so when she requested permission of the sentry guarding the fort’s principal gate to exit into town, the cadet gave her a hasty, wide-eyed salute accompanied by an inexplicably sly grin and let her pass.
The slate-colored clouds blocking the sun today seemed to reflect her morose spirits. As one in a stupor, she walked past the vacant corner home of deceased hero Henri de Tonti. So many good men gone, killed by fever or violence. Hardly anybody in this place lived to quiet old age.
Not Élisabeth le Pinteaux. Not Angela Lemay’s baby. Not Father Mathieu. Not Tristan’s good friend Charles Levasseur, in whose home they had spent their wedding night. And she must face reality—perhaps not even Tristan.
She hesitated, turned the corner, and faced Levasseur’s still vacant house, cattycorner from the home of the Lemay family, with whom she had become quite friendly. Serge and Émile would now run for her when they saw her, and she loved to scoop them up in both arms, reveling in their musky little-boy smell of dust and sweat and fresh air. Angela of course still bitterly mourned the loss of her baby. The simple proximity of coincidental facts—the baby’s death at the same time that Ysabeau’s hold on reality snapped—had convinced the young mother to lay blame at the only door available.
Geneviève had done everything in her power to prevent two tragedies creating a third. Continuing her slow walk toward the seminary burial grounds, she gave a heavy sigh. Finally she felt prepared to pay her formal respects to Father Mathieu. It occurred to her that Jean Cavalier would want to know of his friend’s martyrdom. Somehow she would have to get another message to the Carolina pastor. The familiar ache of dread gnawed at her stomach. No matter how much she owed Jean, the underhanded way she had to communicate with him continued to trouble her.
Shaking off fruitless worry, she picked up her pace. She still had a list of chores to complete in the kitchen at Burelle’s before she could lay her aching head upon her pillow for the night. Halfway down the street, she heard a sharp whistle behind her.
“Hey, Madame! I am in the market for someone to bake me a boatload of bread. I will pay well, should you know someone who can oblige me.”
She stopped. That almost sounded like . . .
Heart leaping, she turned. And there he was, leaning against one of the posts holding up Levasseur’s porch, sunburnt, bareheaded, and coatless, grinning at her utter astonishment. With a shriek she ran for him, oblivious to public decorum, heedless of the scandalous amount of shin bared as she picked up her skirt to free her stride.
Tristan caught her halfway up the steps and swung her off the ground, hauling her hard into his embrace, staggering backward with her until they bounced against the front of the house and rolled inside the open doorway. He kicked the door shut and leaned back against it, holding her so tightly that she could feel the hammering of his heart against hers.
“I missed you,” he said, and kissed her.
Eagerly she responded, fearless this time. Drunk on sensation, she knew not how much time had passed before he loosened his grip enough to allow her feet to touch the floor. With her arms looped around his neck, she tipped her head back to see his face. “What’s the matte
r?” Her lips felt numb.
“Nothing.” His expression was quizzical. “I just wanted to make sure I’m not—”
“You aren’t hurting me,” she said fiercely. “I’m as strong as you are.”
He laughed and drew his thumb across her lips and cheek. “You look like you’ve been rubbing noses with a bear.”
She smiled and tugged his beard. “No doubt I have.” She sobered. “I was afraid you were—”
“Dead, I know. Seems to have been the popular belief.” The smile faded as he searched her face. “I’m so sorry about Father Mathieu. I know how much you loved him.”
“Yes.” She laid her head on his chest to mask the sorrow that knifed through her joy. “I—I still cannot believe it’s true. I feel as if he ought to swing through the door at any moment with a child by the hand, asking for cake batter or beignets.” She paused and made herself say the words. “And your brother—”
“He is not dead.”
The grit in his voice grieved her more than Mathieu’s death. “Tristan, wishing will not make it so.”
“Bienville says Barraud was out of his mind with fever. He thought I was dead too, remember?”
“Yes, but—”
“Geneviève, I studied the campsite. Marc-Antoine’s body wasn’t there. It looked like someone dragged him off into the woods and then went back to cover the trail. Carefully and cleverly done, but if you knew what to look for, it was obvious. The Indians who perpetrated the raid wouldn’t have bothered. They left the other three bodies where they fell.”
She stared up at him, perplexed. “Who would have done such a thing?”
“I don’t know, but my brother isn’t dead. I just know it.” He laid his cheek against the top of her head. “And there’s one other thing I know right now—my wife will be in my arms until I leave again tomorrow.”
20
Tristan had not slept so soundly nor so long since he was a young teenager, worn out from a day of hunting the woods or fishing the streams of Ville Marie, and full of his mother’s fish stew and baguettes. He awoke to the crackling lightning and echoing thunderclaps of a storm outside Levasseur’s cabin. Unable to tell what time it was—he was voraciously hungry, so it must be near noon—he sat up, stretching the kinks out of his achy body and wondering where his wife had got to.
Vaguely he remembered her leaving the bed some hours ago, kissing him and giggling when he tried to drag her back down again. Too sleepy to chase her, he’d let her go, telling himself he’d make it up to her later. Now he tried to remember exactly what she’d said. Something about bread . . .
His stomach gave a loud rumble at the very thought.
He rolled out of bed, found the washbasin and pitcher Geneviève had thoughtfully refilled for him, and dressed. Juggling lingering worry about Marc-Antoine and hopefulness brought with a full night’s rest, he left the cabin and dodged through the storm to Burelle’s.
He stopped on the tavern’s gallery to shake the water out of his hair and sluice down his buckskins, thinking wryly it would likely be hours before he dried out completely. As he entered the common room, he raised a hand to Burelle. The tavernkeep was behind the bar, polishing tankards and carrying on a lively argument with Father Henri, who perched on a stool like a fat white goose in a lily pond.
“She’s in the kitchen,” Burelle called with a wink.
Tristan laughed at the priest’s disapproving stare and made a straight path for the kitchen.
He stopped in the doorway. Geneviève, flushed from the heat, was using a flat, traylike implement attached to a long wooden pole to remove a couple of fragrant loaves from the big arched brick oven. She carried the loaves to the other side of the room, slid them off onto the counter, and set aside the pole, then covered the loaves with squares of flannel. After flouring her hands, she opened one end of the kneading trough and took out two hunks of raw dough, shaped them, set them out to rise beside two already fully risen loaves, then crossed to shake a bit of flour onto the oven floor.
When she bent, floury hands on her hips, to stare into the oven, he couldn’t resist stepping behind her to lay his hands on hers. He leaned over to see what she was looking at.
With a startled shriek, she jerked upright, nearly knocking him cold with the back of her head.
“Ow!” He jumped back, too late to protect his chin.
“Tristan! What are you doing here?” She grabbed the back of her head, leaving a speckling of flour over her hair. “You scared me!”
“I’m sorry.” He gingerly shifted his aching jaw. “Really sorry. I was hungry, but I may not be able to chew for a couple of days.” He glanced at the blackening flour at the bottom of the oven. “What are you doing?”
“Checking the temperature before I put in more loaves to bake.” She turned to gently deposit the two risen loaves on the tray of the pole implement, then carried them back to the oven and slid them in. “I’m not used to having company.”
“So I see.” But she was so beautiful, flour-dusted hair and temper notwithstanding, and the room smelled so heavenly, that he forgave her instantly. He eyed the steam coming from the flannel-covered bread. “Could a man who is about to go on a fortnight’s journey talk you out of a slice of manna?”
Her eyes softened. “I’m making this for you to take with you, but I saved you some crepes from breakfast this morning. Come sit here and talk to me while I work.” She moved a stool up to the counter, took down a plate and a fork from the shelves above, and began to whip about the kitchen like a small whirlwind.
Before long he was seated on the stool, thanking God above for a woman who knew how to make the lightest and sweetest crepes he’d ever put in his mouth, filled with preserved apples and whipped cream, and served with crisp bacon. As he ate, he told her about his conversations with Father Mathieu, beginning with the pictures in the journal.
“I wish I’d picked it up and brought it with me,” he said, shaking his head. “Not only for the drawings, but you would have enjoyed the stories he wrote down. I didn’t know a priest could be such an entertaining companion.”
“He saved my life,” she said, leaning in to check the bread in the oven. “Aimée and I wouldn’t have had a place on the Pélican if it hadn’t been for his intervention.”
Tristan waited, hoping she would elaborate. He had kissed every one of her scars last night, but resisted the urge to push her for explanations. After all, there were things in his own life he found difficult to divulge. Still . . . one of them must open up first.
He remembered the day he had impulsively asked her to wed him, her initial resistance. I’m not what you think I am. She’d claimed never to have seen a convent. I can’t tell you the rest because—
And she had left the sentence unfinished, leaving him to imagine all the terrors which could befall a very young, very beautiful daughter of a common baker. A whip laid upon the delicate skin of her back, surely intended to humiliate as well as injure.
“Geneviève, I am a bastard,” he said.
She jerked upright and whirled to stare at him.
He braced himself. Perhaps she would come to see that it wasn’t his fault. “My mother was seduced by a nobleman, who arranged for her to marry a mapmaker about to emigrate to Canada. Antoine Lanier raised me as his own, and I never knew until your Father Mathieu informed me that this nobleman had changed his mind and decided to legitimate me. They want me to return to France and take up the title and estate, to snatch it away from a half brother I never knew I had.”
He blurted it all out in one long rush, because he was afraid he otherwise would never have the courage to tell her. He didn’t want to go to France. He wanted neither title nor estate. All he wanted was his plantation and his wife—and possibly four or five sons, and maybe a little daughter as beautiful as her mother.
He waited, looking at his hands, one of which gripped the fork, still speared with a cooling stack of crepes, and the other clenched into a fist upon the table.
&nbs
p; She came to him, dusting the flour from her hands before catching his face between them and kissing his forehead. “You must do it, Tristan,” she said with her lips close to his ear. Her voice was fierce and full of tears. “France needs men like you in Versailles, to advise the King in making wise and good decisions for all his people.”
He pulled her into his lap and held her close, smelling the yeast and sugar and browned flour that was uniquely Geneviève. “I cannot decide until I have found my brother,” he said into the top of her head. “You must pray for the good God to guide my steps and sharpen my eyes, so that I may come back to you quickly. You must pray that war will not tear us apart.”
“I will pray.” Her voice broke. “But you know that God in his goodness is not always kind.”
She had married an aristocrat.
Geneviève said it to herself again so that she wouldn’t forget as she prepared to send Tristan off on this second, even more deadly mission. If he survived, and God willing he would, his responsibility became taking his place as a peer of the court of Louis XIV.
As she walked in the rain across the market square green, she asked herself why Father Mathieu had allowed—nay, encouraged her to marry Tristan, knowing that she could never return to France. The moment she did, she would be subject to arrest as a murderess of one of the King’s dragoons.
She shuddered, overcome by a wave of despair so great she wondered if she might join Ysabeau on her journey to madness.
God, have I displeased you by holding my faith in secret? Am I a coward for running from prosecution for my crime? How will I survive if Tristan goes away?
Somehow she knew she would. But the sweetness and color that had unexpectedly alit upon her life like a butterfly was just that fragile. She could hold on to it, hold on to Tristan with all the cunning at her disposal. But if she truly loved him, how could she be so selfish as to keep him from his destiny as God’s instrument of change?
