The Pelican Bride

by Beth White

  Perhaps she could take Raindrop into her confidence and keep her from tattling to Madame or Ginette. She crooked a finger. “Come here. I’m going to tell you a secret.” When Raindrop’s eyes widened, Aimée lowered her voice. “Monsieur Dufresne wants to marry me.” That much at least was true.

  Raindrop shrugged. “That is no secret.”

  “Yes, but we are going to do it tonight. Monsieur is waiting for me at the little storehouse on the river bluff.”

  “I knew you were going somewhere!” Raindrop’s big eyes suddenly narrowed in suspicion. “But why are you not going to the chapel?”

  “Shh! Lower your voice.” She leaned in close to the child’s ear. “We are . . . going on a trip, and Madame would not like it, so don’t tell her. Listen, Julien will be worried, and I’m not quite ready to go. Please run down to the warehouse and tell him I’ll be there directly.” Julien would think she had gone as far out of her mind as Ysabeau, but on such short notice, Aimée couldn’t think of another way to get rid of her little nemesis.

  Raindrop looked at her doubtfully. “How much longer will you be?”

  “Another fifteen minutes should do it.” By the time Raindrop returned to tell Madame, Aimée and Julien would be long gone, and no one could catch her and make her stay. “Hurry! Julien will be watching for me.”

  Raindrop smiled. “I will run like lightning!”

  If Tristan had not believed before that there was a personal God who answered prayer, his faith became a vibrant and glowing thing when he saw his brother lying in the Indian woman’s arms—wounded and unconscious, to be sure, but alive—a scant twenty miles outside the walls of the fort.

  Now the two Indian boys carried the litter, upon which Marc-Antoine lay still and silent in his pain. Tristan and the woman walked on either side, with Deerfoot guarding the rear.

  Nika claimed to be Kaskaskian, though she was dressed in the light Mobilian dress of palm fronds woven with cotton fabric, fashioned in a loose blouse over a skirted girdle about the hips. Her long, black hair had been parted down the middle and plaited into a single tail down the back, and her small ears were pierced and hung with multiple strings of tiny beads that swung against her shoulders. She walked on bare feet beside Marc-Antoine’s litter, guarding him as jealously as a lioness with her cubs.

  Tristan could all but smell the possessiveness in her reluctance to look away from Marc-Antoine’s face, the gentle way she laid the back of her fingers against his forehead every so often.

  Most curious of all, she spoke nearly flawless French—simple in vocabulary, but in grammar and pronunciation displaying only a slightly mislaid accent. When he asked which Jesuit missionary had taught her, she gave him an unexpected smile and said it was no missionary, but a very bad boy.

  “Do you not remember me, monsieur?” she asked lightly.

  He studied the lush mouth, retroussé nose, and black almond eyes. She looked like a hundred other native women he had encountered over the last eight years, including his own wife. He started to shake his head, then a sudden image hit him, and he was leaving fifteen-year-old Marc-Antoine alone in a Kaskaskian village at the northernmost boundary of the Alabama territory. There had been a young maiden standing beside the chief that day—his only daughter, beautiful and exotic as a woodland flower, and already clearly infatuated with the French boy.

  Her lips curved as Tristan’s eyes widened. “It is true,” she said softly. “We taught each other languages . . . and many other things.” She looked away. “I had not seen him for a long time, but of course I remembered him. And when I found him wounded so . . .” She shrugged. “Could I leave him to die?”

  “You found him? How did you happen to be close by during such a massacre?”

  She, in turn, studied him. “You are his older brother, are you not? The one he will die for. The one for whom he will leave everyone, including the girl who loves him.”

  He had no answer for that. He glanced at Marc-Antoine. “I didn’t ask him to die for me.”

  “Of course not. Which is why he would gladly do so.” She lifted her chin. “But I think there are others he would give his life to now.” Then she grinned at him again. “Though he is much more use to us alive, don’t you agree?”

  Tristan chuckled. “Yes. Come now. Tell me the story. We have a long walk ahead of us.”

  And she did, downplaying her own courage and strength. She had watched her husband murder three men and wound two more, but still hadn’t left Marc-Antoine to die, even to protect herself.

  Tristan tried to understand. “Your husband is Mobilian? But Barraud reported that the attackers were Koasati. How could he possibly confuse the two? And why would Mobilians attack a French peace party? They’ve been our allies for many years.”

  Nika was silent for a long moment, staring at Marc-Antoine’s face as if willing him to wake up and answer for her. “My husband is a jealous man. He knew—he seems to have become sure, somehow, that—that your brother and I were once very close.” She glanced at Tristan, shame in her expression. “You will think that I am a wanton woman, but it is not so. I was a maiden when I gave myself to him, only fourteen summers old, and I was sure that Mah-Kah-Twah would stay with me, that my father would allow us to marry. But then—”

  “I came back for him.”

  Her eyes were sad. “Yes. After he left, I . . . had to marry my father’s choice for me.”

  “You’ve been in the Mobile village all this time? Without seeing Marc-Antoine?” That sounded rather far-fetched.

  “I was careful.” When he did not answer, she blurted, “He didn’t want me! I wouldn’t follow him like a puppy!”

  Ah, pride. That he understood. It had kept Marc-Antoine from reconciling with their father. It had kept Tristan from going home after Sholani’s death. “But what were you doing that far north, if you weren’t traveling with your husband? And you say you weren’t following my brother?”

  22

  Ysabeau was singing that monotonous song again. “Raindrop, raindrop, you wet the tip of my little nose. Fall down, fall down on the road. Wet is the road, and wet is my nose.”

  She wouldn’t stop singing. And the rain wasn’t going away either.

  Geneviève sat cross-legged upon her cot with nothing to do but to watch a growing stream rush under the floor slats of the cell. She didn’t have her Bible or her journal. She didn’t have her tatting. She didn’t have corn to grind. All she had were her anxious thoughts and prayers.

  And if the rain didn’t stop soon, more than the tip of her nose was going to be wet. She wondered if Noah’s wife had looked over the side of the grounded ark, watching the waters rise and hoping her husband had heard God’s instructions correctly. She wondered if the guardhouse would float. She wished she’d learned to swim.

  She was in a cage. Like a canary in a rich woman’s house. With another canary who knew only one sad song.

  Why had they locked her up? Did they think she would run away? Where would she have gone? What harm had she done, after all? She had written a letter to Jean Cavalier through Pastor Elie Prioleau, but all it said was that she was settling in well among the Catholics (they weren’t all papist heathens), the Indians she had met were friendly, and oh, by the way, I married a man who thinks I’m beautiful.

  But none of that mattered becasue it was a crime to communicate with a French rebel, however innocently.

  Which made her think of Julien Dufresne, whom she had been trying to push out of her thoughts because he made them so angry and bitter. He was one of the self-righteous papist heathens she had been taught to fear and distrust. The Bible said that one should test the fruit of a life to determine whether they were of the true faith. She had seen no evidence that Dufresne had committed any part of his life to serving God. He served only himself, and he was dangerous as a roaring lion looking around for a tender lamb to devour.

  She must get out of here, before he ruined her little sister.

  It had been hours since youn
g Foussé had shut her in and then walked away. Nobody had bothered to guard her and Ysabeau. She had called and called for a drink of water, but nobody answered. She had slept a little, but her sleep had been restless and uncomfortable. Waking to the sound of Ysabeau’s eerie voice, she’d sat up and started measuring the distance between the water under the guardhouse and the floor.

  The floor was now wet on top. The cell was going to flood.

  “Ysabeau!” She tried not to sound frightened. “Can you see water beneath your cell?”

  “Wet is the road, and wet is my nose.”

  “Listen to me! Stop singing and look at the floor.”

  To her surprise, the song halted. There was a wattle-and-daub wall between the two cells, so she couldn’t see Ysabeau’s movements, but she heard a faint rustling as Ysabeau got off her cot, then a patter of bare feet against the floor.

  “Geneviève, the floor is wet!”

  “Ysette, I think they’ve forgotten us. We have to get out before the building floods.” Ysabeau might not even be lucid, but maybe if both of them shouted for help, someone would come.

  “Help!” Ysabeau shrieked. “Someone open the door!”

  Geneviève went to the bars of the cell and joined her shouts and screams until she was hoarse. Even should someone walk past, the rain pounded outside like the roar of a waterfall. Thunder boomed with deafening anger. Into the looming darkness lightning crackled, allowing glimpses of the water which now covered the entire floor, drenching Geneviève’s moccasins and reaching the bottom of her skirt.

  She sloshed over to the wall between the cells and laid her palm on it. The lumpy oyster-shell-and-mud texture was damp. And soft. She pushed on it, felt it give, then pushed harder. It cracked. Slamming the heel of her hand against the wall with all her strength, she felt it give way, falling in chunks into the other room.

  “Ysabeau! Come here! The wall is soft enough to break down. At least we can be together!”

  There was no answer. Geneviève waited until the next flash of lightning and peered through the hole she had made.

  Ysabeau sat on her cot, arms wrapped around her knees. When lightning lit the cell again, Ysabeau’s wide eyes gleamed like a cat’s. “No one’s coming,” she said flatly. “We’re going to die.”

  Marc-Antoine was not going to die. He would not allow it.

  Tristan and the Indian boys had carried his brother’s litter twenty miles in driving wind and rain with lightning flashing like bolts of fire flung from the heavens. Nika had gone ahead of them to search out the safest trails, dodging swollen creeks and flooded swampland. Then she would circle back and guide them through.

  By the time they reached the stockade, evening blanketed the wooded terrain with sluggish, funereal darkness. The entire party dragged themselves forward on strength of will alone. As they stopped before the big oaken gates, intermittent flashes of lightning threw the pickets of the stockade into glaring relief as if the teeth of hell waited to swallow them all. After shouting for the sentry, Tristan glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of his brother’s face, wet and twisted in pain. Marc-Antoine twitched about, eyes closed, playing out some feverish dream, muttering nonsense about books and pictures, paintings and the Madonna’s child. Perhaps he thought he had already died and faced heaven’s gates.

  He would give the sentry another minute or two before he ordered his native companions to hack down the gate with their hatchets. Part of him hoped there would no longer be anyone here. Bienville should have taken the inhabitants of the settlement, soldiers and all, and moved them to higher ground, as Tristan had suggested before he left. The fort itself sat on high ground, but the river had swollen outside its bounds, even on this bluff.

  He had regretted his decision to leave Geneviève, more with every step. With Marc-Antoine safely within his care once more, her fate became uppermost in his mind.

  He signaled to the Indians that he wanted to rest Marc-Antoine’s litter on the ground, and they retraced their steps to a little hillock where the river rushed past, leaving a broad muddy knoll above the flood. Leaving Nika to keep watch over his injured brother, Tristan, Deerfoot, and the two boys waded back to the gate. In a matter of minutes they had hacked the rotten gate open. They pulled down the hewn pieces, threw them out of the way, and went back for Marc-Antoine.

  As they struggled through the waist-high stream running along the base of the glacis, holding the injured Marc-Antoine as high as possible, Tristan continued to pray for wisdom, for holy favor, for the safety of his family and his countrymen. Whatever wrongs he had suffered at their hands, he willed no man to die in this enclosed whirlpool.

  At last they navigated the ascending glacis and reached the main entrance of the fort, which opened into the guardhouse. Judging by the general state of abandonment they had encountered thus far, Tristan expected the guardhouse to be empty. He signaled for Nika to pound on the locked door with the butt end of Tristan’s hatchet. They waited, heard nothing, and Nika banged on the door again. Tristan gestured her aside, took the hatchet, and traded places with her.

  This door, being a little more protected from the weather, was harder to chop through than the outer gate, but it finally gave way to three or four of his weary blows with the hatchet. He started clearing away the pieces of the door and immediately saw why it had been so difficult to open.

  “Get back!” he shouted as a waist-high wall of pent-up water rushed at him. He turned to grab the litter, but it was too late. The deluge shoved him into Nika, and she dropped her corner of the litter. Marc-Antoine rolled off underwater, while the three Indians shouted in terror as they tried to stay on their feet.

  Bracing himself, staggered by the force of the flood, Tristan held his breath and went under for Marc-Antoine. Lungs bursting, he was just about to come up for another gulp of air when his right hand snagged fabric. Blindly grabbing at it, he hauled himself upright and jerked his brother out of the water by his ruined shirt. He caught Marc-Antoine up in his arms and held him fast, both of them coughing and spewing water.

  When he could breathe again, he searched for Nika and thought he saw her at the bottom of the glacis, swimming against swirling eddies in an attempt to regain her feet. He didn’t see the three Indians, but a sound from within the guardhouse made him look back. The stream of pent-up water from within the building had slowed as the water level subsided, until he could stand without being knocked off his feet. Marc-Antoine was heavy in the best of circumstances, but his wet clothing and unsupported weight tested the limits of Tristan’s strength. He needed to find a place of shelter where he could lay his brother down and attend to his injury. Nika, Deerfoot, and the Koasati boys would have to fend for themselves for the moment.

  He would have to wade through the dark guardhouse. Maybe someone had left a lantern and flint hanging out of the water’s reach. Shifting his brother a little higher in his arms, he turned to edge his way through the door.

  Then, as he paused in the hallway between infirmary and guardroom, he heard it again—a hoarse noise that might have been a woman’s voice. Frowning at the tricks his mind played upon him in his anxiety, he waited for another shaft of lightning. There! Though he saw nothing but water and the leaky thatched roof overhead, he heard the shout again, a little louder and longer. In the darkness he felt along the wall with his shoulder until he found the guardroom door.

  Holding onto Marc-Antoine, he was forced to find the latch with two fingers, crouching to release it. The door, swinging open on another rush of contained water, would have taken him off his feet again if he hadn’t hit the infirmary wall with his back. By now he could hear two women shouting for help.

  Had Bienville been so cruel as to leave Geneviève and Ysabeau to drown in this rat hole? “Geneviève!”

  “Tristan!” she screamed.

  “Hold on—I’m coming!” Galvanized, muscles trembling from his brother’s dead weight, he fought his way into the room through the swirling dark water. Even with some of i
t having rushed out into the hallway and over the glacis, he was in waist-high water. “Where are you?”

  “Center cell! Ysabeau’s on your right.”

  “I don’t have a key,” he said in despair. “Marc-Antoine is injured—I can’t break you out.” He thought for a precious few seconds. “I’m going to press through to the drill ground—maybe there’ll be someplace to leave him out of the storm. Hang on—I’ll come back for you!”

  With every last ounce of his strength Tristan fought his way back to the hallway. Keeping his back pressed against the wall, he sidled toward the drill ground entrance. When he stepped out into the flooded green, he saw that, though neither moon nor stars lit the weeping night sky, the rain had slackened to a mild drizzle and he could pick out the shadowy shapes of the fort’s other three buildings. A wavering lamplight came from headquarters. Murmuring a prayer of thanksgiving, even while he wondered how Nika and the three Indians fared, he waded toward the light.

  He accomplished the thirty-foot uphill distance without incident, discovering that by the time he reached his destination he was no longer wading, but splashing through ankle-deep water. Mounting the steps to the gallery, he looked down at Marc-Antoine’s face and was startled to find his eyes open.

  “This makes twice, big brother,” Marc-Antoine said with a wan smile. “You’ll never get rid of me now.”

  Tristan sighed and leaned against the closed door. “We all have our burdens to bear.”

  Aimée slipped out the side door, which opened onto Madame’s chicken yard. She was not overly fond of chickens, but if she went through the front family room, she would face Madame’s endless questions. Pausing to assess the chicken detritus she was likely to step in on the way to the river, she shifted the blanket roll tied across her shoulder with a rope. Rain had come down in torrents all day. This was starting out as a very unpleasant adventure.

  She stepped out from under the thatching of the eaves. She was almost sorry she had sent Raindrop away. Life was going to be dreary indeed with only Julien for company. It was true that he had beautiful manners, he danced like an angel, and he could be charming and entertaining when he chose. But ever since the night she had taken Geneviève’s pastries to him, and allowed him the liberty of kissing her lips, he had developed an annoying habit of ordering her about. As if she were one of his cadets, or—or a kitchen wench even.