Savage Lands

by Clare Clark

  Auguste shook his head and immediately regretted it. Usually he lied.

  ‘Keeping your options open?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Wise man. You know, I never thought I’d marry. Seen too many men stifled that way, the demands, the complaints. The ceaseless scolding. Elisabeth is not like that, thank God. She is strong, self-reliant. Bloody-minded, some might say.’ Babelon smiled. ‘My mother would approve of that. Fierce as a tigress she was and twice as fearless. I think she would have killed anyone who tried to lay a finger on us.’

  ‘She is in Quebec still, your mother?’

  ‘She died. When I was eight years old. You?’

  ‘My mother is alive. I think. But she is not fierce. Not fierce at all.’

  ‘Then you shall have to do as I have and find yourself a fierce wife instead.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t fool yourself, Auguste. We may have stronger sinews, but it is men who are the weaker sex. Every man needs a fearless woman to fight his battles for him.’

  It was years since Auguste had dreamed of Jean, but that night his cousin returned to him. He stood on the harbour wall at La Rochelle, his hands upon his hips. Auguste had to tip his head right back to see him. The glare of the sun burned his eyes.

  ‘Come up!’ Jean called. ‘Come up here!’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Auguste called back, though he was afraid. But when he began to climb the wall was smooth and slippery. He could gain no purchase on it. Time and again he tried to climb, but each time he fell backwards the wall grew higher and its surface more slippery. Auguste could no longer see the sun.

  ‘Come up here!’ Jean called impatiently, and his voice was muffled, as though it came from a long way off. ‘Come up!’

  In his dream Auguste felt the slide of hot tears on his cheeks, the sick chill of humiliation in his belly.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he whimpered. ‘I can’t do it!’

  But Jean was gone.

  The next day Babelon left, headed north. Auguste did not say goodbye. He watched him leave from his hiding place in the canebrake. All that afternoon, as he skinned deer and scraped the hair from the hides for soaking, he thought of Jean. When he closed his eyes, he could still bring to mind his cousin’s voice, with its distinctive ragged edges and its sailor’s disregard for nicety but, though he screwed up his face with the effort of it, he could not summon Jean’s face.

  Ensign Babelon returned to the Ouma three more times before winter came, each time remaining in the village for some days after his business was complete. The chief always extended him a warm welcome. Auguste watched carefully and knew why. In addition to the corn he purchased for the settlement and the presents he brought to reinforce their friendship, Babelon brought with him a selection of French goods for private sale, including muskets and powder and frequently brandy. The arrangement was conducted discreetly, to both men’s advantage.

  ‘The wise man does not dominate the red man, nor does he seek to civilise him,’ Babelon said to Auguste. It was the last expedition of the year before the ice came, and he was in no hurry to return south. ‘He observes their customs and directs them to his own ends. If a white man snatches a native woman from her own village, the savages will come after him and break his head, as many a doltish hunter has discovered. But if he comes to the savage chief in friendship, then the chief shall offer him women as he offers him meat, for his greater comfort.’

  Auguste was silent.

  ‘It is habit that makes a man stupid. We purchase our slaves from the local traders in the marketplace and yet still we reward the Choctaw with a rifle for every Alabama scalp they bring us, because that is how it has always been. It is the purest kind of idiocy. What possible profit can be gained from a scalp without the savage still attached?’

  Auguste wanted to ask him then why it was that Babelon told him these things, but he did not. The soldier was, like him, a servant of the commandant. They were on the same side. All the same, he watched him closely, careful to mistrust his companionship, and held himself tightly, so that the soldier might find nothing in him to profit by. He could not conquer his suspicion that any man who sought his friendship must surely mean to swindle him.

  But late at night, as Babelon talked and the fire sighed and sank, something inside him unknotted a little and he did not resist it. He had never before heard anyone talk as he did. Jean had never had much time for words. For Jean talk was for planning, not for pleasure: at sundown, under the dock, faster, higher, that dog with this stone. But with Babelon the conversation was the game. From him, Auguste learned the art of spinning stories into bright patterns; he came to see the adventure of words, the thrill of another’s attention, the sharp delight of provoking laughter. He stopped drawing in the dirt as he spoke, so that he might have all his attention for it. When Babelon clapped his hands together in delight at the story of the missionary’s burning glass, Auguste thought he would burst from the triumph of it.

  Babelon did not mean to stay a soldier. Wise men wanted to be rich, he told Auguste, for the rich could make the world bend to their will. Auguste shook his head, surprising himself with the strength of his opinions. The white man’s world of risk and profit was like iron, he protested. Hard and cold, it required a fire of great intensity to bend it. He favoured the savage way, where those with surplus wealth distributed it generously among the others. There was no need to be rich when the shape of the world was softer and might be altered more easily.

  Babelon frowned thoughtfully, nudging a smouldering log with his boot so that a spray of bright red sparks twisted upward in a veil of smoke. Auguste watched them as they burst and flattened into grey ash. He was in no hurry for Babelon’s answer. It was in these silences that the threads of understanding seemed to tighten and quiver between them.

  ‘You are wrong,’ Babelon said at last. ‘The savages want nothing because they have nothing. It cannot remain so. We tame them with presents they cannot hunt or grow or make from clay. And so it goes. They teach us a hundred dishes with Indian corn and we teach them to covet the possessions of their neighbour.’

  Babelon never talked to Auguste about the savage women. It was something else that marked him out, that made him different from the other men. But on the fourth or fifth night, when Babelon bid him goodnight and went without ceremony to a hut that was not his, Auguste did the same. It was a brief and awkward encounter. When it was over, she did not speak and he could think of nothing to say. Instead he rose quickly, turning his face from the eyes that gleamed in the darkness, and went outside.

  The moon was high, flooding the village with silver light. Beside him his shadow on the hard ground was precise, ink-black. Outside the hut to which Babelon had gone he saw a girl. She squatted with her legs apart and the stream of urine was bright in the moonlight. Her braid fell over her shoulder and on her neck there was a cluster of dark bruises, like sores.

  Later, restless on his palliasse, he stared down at his unclothed body, the sparse growth of hair around his genitals, his awkward boyish limbs, and he longed suddenly for Jean, who might teach him how to be a man. But, as he fell at last into sleep, his last thoughts were not of his cousin nor of the girl whose smell he wore upon his skin, but of Babelon, who saw into the heart of him and liked him all the same.

  THE WOMEN STOOD around the table, chopping and stirring encouragingly as Perrine Roussel lamented their misfortunes. Elisabeth, standing to one side, tilted her head at an angle that suggested attention, watching the spiral of peel that curled away from her knife. It was an unexpectedly warm day for December and the white flesh of the apple was already brown. The apples were her christening gift, the first crop of her own tree. When she had piled them into the basket to bring them, their sweet smell had filled her with a quiet pride.

  ‘Bacon, wine, barrels of flour – all taken direct from the Aigle to his own private store,’ Perrine protested, holding out hands lumpy with dough. ‘From what I hear, the commissary tears his hair out but the commandant
has paid off the ship’s officers and he is powerless to stop it.’

  By the thrown-open door to the yard, Jean-Claude conversed with the widow Freval. The widow did not seem to notice the other women who, as was customary, had gathered in the kitchen to assist in the preparation of the christening meal.

  ‘Two years we have waited for that ship. Two years, mesdames, to have the food stolen from under our very noses!’

  When news of the Aigle’s arrival had reached Mobile several of the wives had wept with joy. Though small, the ship had proved heavily laden, bringing not only food but luxuries so long denied that they had almost forgotten to hanker for them: bolts of fabric and ribbons, cooking utensils, paper and ink, even candles, though these were all broken or melted. There had been building materials too: ropes and knives and nails, and a handful of settlers, among them the widow Freval. With her two young daughters, the widow had taken lodgings with the schoolteacher and had quickly established herself as a dressmaker. The women all agreed she had exceptionally skilful hands.

  Elisabeth threw the peeled apple on to the pile on the table and took up another, sliding her knife beneath the skin. Mme Freval was a pretty little thing with soft white arms and a heart-shaped face, which she tipped up towards Jean-Claude, her lips parted in a smile. Though her gown was modest in its cut, it displayed her plump figure to advantage, its dark trim drawing attention to the creaminess of her skin. Her brown hair was caught in a loose knot at the nape of her neck and, as he spoke, she twisted a curl of it between her fingers.

  ‘How then, I ask you, may we share in this rare largesse, we who starve here for the want of decent flour?’ Perrine demanded, kneading furiously. ‘When we are prepared to pay our esteemed commandant three times the proper price for it, that’s when! And who here can afford to do that? Not any of us, that’s for certain, not when that very same esteemed commandant has paid no one but himself for three straight years!’

  Elisabeth watched as Jean-Claude inclined his head towards the widow, murmuring something that made her laugh. It was a happy occasion. The previous night, some hours before dawn and after a long labour, Marie-Cathérine Christophe had brought forth a healthy son. That morning, at a baptism attended by family and a handful of neighbours, the boy had been named François-Xavier for his godfather, the powder-maker François-Xavier Lemay.

  Elisabeth herself had been present at the birth. She had held the labouring woman’s hand as she braced herself against the force of her contractions and sponged the sweat from her brow. When the time came for the child to be born, she had pressed down on Marie-Cathérine’s knees as Guillemette worked with her hands to draw the infant out. When at last it came, the sound of flesh tearing had been sharp, like ripped silk. As Guillemette cut the cord and spooned watery gruel into the wailing infant’s mouth, she had motioned for Elisabeth to assist with the delivery of the afterbirth. She had warned Elisabeth before that the mother might require the belladonna, for she was sore and much fatigued, but Marie-Cathérine had only moaned, jerking with the pain, and expelled the bloody mass in a single fleshy slither. Then she had taken the squalling child into her arms and wept. Elisabeth had wept too but quietly, blinking her tears into her bloodstained sleeve.

  It had been her first birth. Afterwards Guillemette had nodded at her.

  ‘You did well,’ she had said, and Elisabeth had shaken her head. Her duties had been simple, little more than the boiling of water and tearing of rags and, in the darkest hour of the night, the preparation of a caudle of wine with sugar and spices to boost the labouring woman’s spirits. And yet, as she had walked home in the strengthening dawn, the sky pink-tinted and the air sweet with birdsong, she had been overwhelmed by the sudden sense that the world had been created afresh and that she, Elisabeth Savaret, was a part of it.

  ‘I do not know how he dares,’ Perrine sniffed. ‘Accusing us of shiftlessness when we refuse to till the fields like peasants, while all the while he eats like a king from our very plates!’

  She was still raw with it, raw and light-headed with lack of sleep. When she had arrived back at the cabin that morning, Jean-Claude was just waking and she had built a fire and made porridge and coffee and brought them to him. She was dropping with fatigue and yet she was possessed of a fierce energy that made the thought of sleep impossible. Instead she had washed her face and changed her clothes, putting her bloody apron and sleeves to soak in a bucket of lye before taking up a broom and setting about the cabin floor. As the dust rose around her, she thought of the blood-slimed child who had opened his white-blue eyes to gaze up at her in furious astonishment and of the look that had passed then between her and Guillemette, and the dust had caught in her throat and caused her eyes to water.

  The widow’s two daughters ran through the kitchen, ducking beneath the floury arms of Anne Conaud, the blacksmith’s wife, who, red-faced, lifted an iron kettle from the fire. She tutted at them irritably as they slipped through the doorway to wind themselves in their mother’s skirts, clamping to her legs like irons and clamouring for her attention. The widow placed a hand lightly on their tousled heads but she did not look at them. Her face was still tipped up towards Jean-Claude’s. Elisabeth did not know how the widow had contrived to be invited to the party. Her lodgings were on the other side of the settlement, beyond the place d’Armes. As for blood ties, she was kin to no one.

  ‘For the love of peace, Elisabeth Savaret!’ Perrine scolded. ‘See how much apple you take off with that peel!’

  The widow stooped, taking the girls into her arms and pressing her lips against their foreheads. Jean-Claude watched them in silence, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his breeches. Elisabeth willed him to look up, to seek her out, but he did not. The widow opened her arms and, seizing each other’s hands, the girls ran together through the open door. The widow and Jean-Claude smiled. He placed a hand beneath her elbow. Then they followed them.

  Slowly an unpeeled apple rolled from the pile and fell with a thud to the floor.

  ‘Elisabeth Savaret? Where do you think you are going?’

  But she was already gone.

  Above the screams of the birds, Elisabeth could hear the flimsier cries of the girls as they called out to their mother. The afternoon was bright, the sun a harsh white glare behind its shade of cloud, and she squinted as she hurried down the steps and into the yard. When she reached the mulberry tree, she stopped, aware suddenly of the apple-sticky knife in her hand. They were standing together at the southern edge of the yard, their backs to her, a clear slice of the canebrake that edged the property visible between them. As she watched the widow called out to one of the girls, warning her to take care. Beside her Jean-Claude hoisted the smaller one up into his arms. The child leaned back away from him, her face crumpled with concentration as he pointed upward. There was nothing and then a vividly coloured bird flashed green and scarlet across the white sky.

  ‘Yes,’ she cried delightedly. ‘Yes, I see it. I see it!’

  Jean-Claude turned. Elisabeth hastened backwards, snatching at her skirts, until, bent over a little, she was concealed by the fans of the palmetto. She could hear feet creaking on the planks of the stoop behind her, muffled voices, the distinctive bark of René Boyer’s laughter. In the sudden dread of discovery, her feet slipped on the muddy ground and she fell, dropping the knife and bruising her hand against a rock.

  Perrine looked up as she returned to the kitchen and took up her knife.

  ‘Whatever happened to you?’ she asked peevishly. ‘You’re white as milk.’

  Elisabeth bent her head, pressing the blade of her knife into the waxy apple. It left a smear of mud on the rosy skin.

  ‘Well? Are you ill?’

  ‘No. Perhaps. I don’t know.’

  Perrine shook her head, expelling a spiteful snort of laughter.

  ‘Why, Elisabeth Savaret, one birth and you could almost be a physician.’

  After the baptism dinner, Jean-Claude was summoned to the garrison and Elisabeth
returned home alone. The hectic energy that had sustained her through the day had soured into an exhausted jitteriness. Fatigue fogged her head, making her clumsy. When she heated the stew over the fire, she burned her hand on the iron pot. She sucked the scorched flesh, feeling the blister rise beneath her tongue. She thought then of the tiny infant, not yet a day old, suckling at his mother’s breast, and of the indissoluble threads that bound her to Marie-Cathérine and to the child, whether he knew it or not. When Guillemette le Bras had first asked if she might consider assisting her in her midwifery, Elisabeth had hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she had said. ‘I would not be a popular choice.’

  But Guillemette had only frowned, studying Elisabeth with her red knuckles pressed against her hips.

  ‘You are capable and circumspect, qualities of considerably greater worth to a labouring woman than a fondness for tittle-tattle. Surely you wish to be useful?’

  The spoon slack in her hand, Elisabeth let her head hang forward. Her eyes closed and she thought of Rochon, who had gone to live among the savages so that he might not rot in a safe harbour. She thought of the widow and her daughters, of a heart-shaped face tipped upward and a smile tucked into the corner of a mouth, and of the rags she soaked each month, the trails of brown blood drifting in the water like smoke.

  It was late when he returned, his supper still on the table. Rubbing her eyes, Elisabeth lifted the top plate. The gravy had grown a waxy skin.

  ‘I’m afraid it has spoiled rather.’

  Jean-Claude shrugged, reaching for his fork. He was in good humour.

  ‘How was the commandant?’ she asked.

  ‘The commandant was uncommonly well.’

  Elisabeth brought the pitcher of water. The water splashed a little as she poured, making a puddle on the table.

  ‘You are not usually so glad to see him,’ she said as she fumbled a rag from her apron.

  ‘He is not usually so sympathetic.’