by Clare Clark
‘No. If indeed she is with child, she will lose it. She always does.’
Auguste murmured something in reply but the words vanished, swallowed into the swamp of the starless night. Elisabeth’s skin was prickly with gooseflesh. She clutched her arms about herself, tasting in her mouth the curdled-milk tang of dread. Her legs shook as a sudden spike of sickness pushed up into her throat. Turning, she vomited violently into the crock of sagamity.
Afterwards, she covered the pot and washed her face with water. Then she sat before the fire, her hands folded in her lap. She was still sitting there when he returned. The tallow had burned out and the fire too, though the dying embers glowed red through the crust of ash. He was drunk and, from the force with which he shouldered open the door, in ill humour. He swore as he struggled with his boots, dropping them noisily before turning towards bed. He was almost upon her when he saw her, her face platille-pale in the darkness, and the shock of it caused him to stumble.
‘Sacrement!’ he cried out angrily. ‘Lurking like a thief in the pitch darkness, what is wrong with you?’
She did not flinch. She looked up at him and the grief and the shock in her caught, exploding in a great blaze of fury.
‘With me? What is wrong with me?’
‘What the devil–?’
‘You told me you did not want children. You said so. You said we – that I was all you wanted.’
She was on her feet now, her fists clenched before her, her eyes coal-bright. Jean-Claude’s hands fell to his sides. He blinked, steadying himself on the back of a chair.
‘It has happened again, hasn’t it?’
‘It always happens.’
‘Oh, I know.’
‘It happens because it is what you wanted,’ she shouted. ‘What you have decided for us.’
‘What I have decided? For God’s sake, Elisabeth, what the devil has it to do with me?’
‘It has everything to do with you. It was what you wanted. I didn’t want – I never wanted – I–’
She sagged suddenly, the fire all burned out.
‘It was for you,’ she whispered, and the ash drifted in her, ice-cold. ‘I did it for you.’
Jean-Claude stared at her, his eyes hard. Then he passed his hands over his face.
‘Go to bed, Elisabeth.’
‘It was for you.’
‘Vierge, Elisabeth–’
‘When I told you I was with child you said – you said you did not want it. You said that we could neither of us endure it.’
He stared at her then and a muscle jumped in his cheek. In the gloom Elisabeth’s lips were grey-blue.
‘You think this is my fault? My fault that you cannot keep a child in your belly?’
Elisabeth swallowed. She was empty, numb. She felt nothing. She clenched her fists tighter, trying to hold onto the numbness, the nothing. She could feel herself falling.
‘It was what you wanted,’ she said again, her voice cracking, and the crack split her in two, like a split log, all the way through.
‘Enough, for God’s sake! You are gone mad.’
She had never seen him so angry. When he slammed the door she did not move. She knew that if she moved she would awaken. She would feel. She did not think to weep and yet the tears fell, running unchecked down her face. She stood quite still as the hollowness inside her stretched wider than the bones that contained it.
He came to bed much later, bringing with him the smell of brandy and stale sweat. At some time in the night he reached for her. His hands and his breath were hot against her skin, his need urgent and quickly sated.
‘That’s better,’ he murmured afterwards and she squeezed her eyes tight shut, so that she might not weep again.
Soon afterwards he began to snore. She lay awake until the platille at the window greyed and the clatter of the birds stirred the sun to rising. Then she must have fallen asleep. When she woke, the window was bright with low-slanting sun and he was gone.
FOR AUGUSTE MOBILE was to prove a kind of heaven. He had not grieved to leave the nation of the Ouma, just as he had not grieved to leave his mother in La Rochelle. He belonged in neither place. In the savage village as in the port of his birth, he had chafed against the structured hierarchies into which he had been required to fit, never finding the ease or the fearlessness required for friendship. He had become accustomed to the sense of wrongness that rested like a stone on his chest. He still did not know quite how it was that it flavoured his voice or his breath or some other vital part of him with the unmistakable stink of otherness, but he knew that it did and he had long since ceased to fight against it. It was as much a part of himself as his eyes or the scar on his arm.
With Babelon and Elisabeth it was different. There was a space for him alongside them and its shape was his shape. There was no trick to it. He breathed out and his breath matched the air around him. It was so ordinary that at first he hardly trusted it. He was hesitant, discomfited by the proximity of them and shy of their easy intimacy. He was dismayed by the blatancy of his presence in their house, like a clumsy spinster aunt. When he ate with them, he excused himself early so that they might resume the proper business of being two.
He did not know exactly how it had changed, only that it did, so that by the time the spring came he was a part of them and they of him. It did not go unnoticed. A few of the townspeople remarked upon it. Even the locksmith Le Caën, a man of few words, was heard to jest about the woman with two husbands, the words sloshing about in his mouth in a swill of Burelle’s home-brewed liquor. Beside him his daughter bent her head silently over the opossum, her chapped lips moving, her pressed-together brows low over her fierce black eyes.
Then it was spring. On their last evening together, as they prepared to depart for the first expedition of the year, Auguste watched Elisabeth’s white face and he was filled with a sudden and terrible dread that their winter bonds, once unknotted, might never again be rebound. Unable to imagine how the two of them would reach each other across the lack of her, he embarked upon the journey with a heavy heart, unleavened by the play of light upon the water, the bursting green newness of the freshly awakened forest. To his surprise, he missed the opossum, which he had left in the care of the locksmith’s daughter. At night the blanket over his feet was cold and insubstantial.
Babelon too began the expedition in foul humour. Though he said little, it was clear that he and Bienville had quarrelled. At the village of the Little Tomeh, which was the first of their destinations, he bid the savage guide to watch over the pirogue containing the commandant’s private goods but not, as was usual, to unload it.
‘We shall return it to him just as it is,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘Let us see how he likes that.’
And later, when Auguste made imprudent mention of the commandant, his face darkened.
‘That miserly bastard would have all of Louisiana for his own estate. Well, let me tell you, I for one am no dumb slave.’
But Babelon was not possessed of the stolidity of character that allows a man to fix obstinately upon ill temper. As the Mobile River rolled the leagues away from beneath them, he could not subdue his delight in being free of the constraints of the settlement. It seemed to Auguste that as they made their way towards the nation of the Talimali, Babelon grew taller, his rising spirits thickening his muscles and pressing the beard from his chin.
The Talimali were refugees of the Apalache nation, Catholics who had fled their villages in the Spanish east to escape attack by bands of Alabama and Apalachicola raiders in the pay of the English. They spoke a strange tongue that was part savage, part Spanish, and so different from their neighbours that Auguste was required to spend much time among the women and children of the village, inducing them with small gifts to talk with him and assist him in his learning. They did so willingly. It was Bienville who had granted them land on the Mobile River on which to settle, and they were grateful.
When some days later they came to the village of the Mouvill, whose l
anguage resembled that of the Chickasaw, Auguste did the same. After that, in each new nation, it was his habit to squat in a place where he might draw in the earth as he talked. In each place a circle of children would quickly gather around him, pointing at his pictures and shrieking with mirth at his mistakes. The entertainment was always short-lived. Auguste’s stiff tongue would soften, his shoulders would drop, and, as their language spread and stretched within him, the children would return to their games and their chores, only occasionally remembering to take notice of the stranger in their midst.
‘How do you remember it all?’ Babelon asked him late one night. The fire was almost burned out and he kicked at it to summon a flame. Auguste shrugged. ‘No, really. How do you hold all that nonsense in your head?’
Auguste was silent, considering the question.
‘I suppose it’s like places,’ he said at last. ‘My mother’s room in La Rochelle, say, or the hut at the Ouma. Or your own cottage. When you are away from it, you have to remember, to think, yes, the oak chest is there, the table there. You wonder, is it the right window where the platille is coming away in the corner or the left? But when you are there you do not have to remember. You know it without thinking. Of course it is the right-hand window where the nail is missing. There it is, right in front of you.’
‘Nails missing?’ Babelon said drily. ‘In my house? I think perhaps you are not acquainted with my wife.’
Auguste smiled and said nothing. Except that it is your house I am thinking of, he thought. The nail is missing and the flap of loose platille is marked with a small smudge of orange rust. The oak chest has a chip in its lid the shape of a pumpkin seed and the faded blue cloth on the table, embroidered at the hem with paler blue silk, is the same colour as her eyes. There is a basket of woven palmetto on the table that she sometimes fills with fruit. She likes plums best, particularly the dark purple ones with the golden flesh. The top of the table is marked with knife cuts and, on the corner closest to the fireplace, there is a black half-circle where a hot kettle has scorched it. She places her hand over the mark sometimes, palm flat, when she is thinking, and spreads her fingers. She has a pattern of freckles on the back of her right hand like the five on a die.
The fire sighed, sinking into soft ash.
‘It must be hard to leave her,’ Auguste murmured.
‘I have grown accustomed to it.’
‘But when she is in poor health–?’
Babelon raised an eyebrow.
‘I have grown accustomed to that too.’
‘Of course the climate is not wholesome.’
‘The climate suited her well enough once.’
The two men were silent, staring into the dying fire.
‘Time is not kind to women,’ Babelon observed at last. ‘As their skin slackens it seems that their nerve-strings do too. When I first met Elisabeth nothing daunted her. She was so strong, so – brave.’
‘Fierce.’
‘Fierce, yes.’ Babelon smiled. ‘You should have seen her, so indignant over this or that.’ The smile faded. ‘She is not fierce any more.’
‘She has been ill.’
‘Unceasingly.’
Auguste thought of Elisabeth’s ashen face, the purple shadows smudging her brown eyes, the tightening around the corners of her generous mouth and across her knuckles as she bit down on the pain. She always fought fiercely against the pain.
‘It must fatigue her,’ he murmured.
Babelon sighed, kicking out at the fire with his heel so that sparks rose in a red arc against the dark night.
‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘It fatigues us both.’
They remained in each village for several days before continuing north to the great nation of the Choctaws. Much of the land remained uninhabited, uncleared. As the river rolled out behind them, the sharp corners of Elisabeth’s absence softened and Auguste found himself adapting to the shape of the traveller’s life, the slap of the paddles, the tumble of the water, the shriek and stretch of the forest, the sharp, strong smell of men one behind the other in the hollowed-out intimacy of a small pirogue or beneath makeshift tents of bent reed canes covered in cloth, which the French called baires. As they made their way from the low delta through the plains and almost as far as the mountains of upper Louisiana, Auguste found his curiosity inflamed by the innumerable species of plants and insects that flourished there. Many were unfamiliar to him. He gathered those specimens that caught his eye, took cuttings and seeds for his garden at rue Condé. In the evenings, after camp was struck, he bent over them, studying their singularities and sketching them in the dust to set them more firmly in his memory.
‘For the love of God,’ Babelon protested one evening. ‘Anyone would think you had never seen a leaf before.’
‘This is no ordinary leaf,’ Auguste replied, holding up the flower in his hand. ‘Look here. See how it grows upward, curling around to make a kind of hollow belly? When insects enter them this flap here lowers like a lid so that it cannot escape.’
‘Why does it wish to trap insects?’
‘It eats them.’
‘A carnivorous plant?’
‘Yes. The Ouma consider it a powerful remedy against fever. A love potion too.’
Babelon peered more closely at the plant.
‘Intriguing.’
Later the ensign rummaged in his pack and brought out a small book tied around with a strip of leather into which was tucked a stub of pencil.
‘Here,’ he said, proffering them to Auguste. ‘You should keep a proper record.’
Auguste shook his head awkwardly. Paper was scarce and he had never learned to use a pencil.
‘I should only spoil it.’
‘Better you than I,’ Babelon answered and he jammed the book in the younger man’s pocket. Auguste kept it there for days, feeling the nudge of it against his thigh as he squatted over his dust pictures. But when at last he opened it and summoned the pencil in his fingers, he found it surprisingly obliging and accurate.
‘These are good,’ Babelon observed some days later, flicking through the pages.
‘I have used too many pages. Here, please. Take it back.’
But Babelon would not.
When at last they gained the first village of the Choctaw nation, they received troubling news. Some weeks previously, two Englishmen, envoys of the governor in Carolina, had visited a Chickasaw village only a few leagues from their far border with the Choctaw. They had brought eight packhorses loaded with merchandise and stayed in the village for eight days. During that time they had repeatedly impressed upon the Chickasaw chiefs that a friendship with the English was essential to that nation’s prosperity. To secure that friendship they offered not only gifts but also advantageous trading terms.
Auguste let the silence settle. Then very quietly he asked the chief how it was that he knew such things.
‘The Chickasaw have long been our adversaries,’ the chief replied. ‘The prudent warrior knows the business of his enemies at least as well as his own.’
‘And what answer did the Chickasaw chiefs give the Englishmen?’ Auguste asked.
The chief shook his head. He did not know. He knew only that the envoys had brought guns and gunpowder to the Chickasaw and that the Chickasaw chiefs had not refused them. In addition, the English had asked permission to return, and this too the Chickasaw chiefs had not refused.
Auguste nodded. Then he turned to Babelon and translated what the chief had said.
‘Those bastards.’ Babelon frowned, his fingers drumming on his thighs. ‘Those slippery savage bastards.’
‘Our people have made many promises to the Chickasaw that we have not honoured,’ Auguste murmured. ‘More presents, trade advantages, a fort in their province. So far they have received none of them.’
‘But they smoked the calumet with us, did they not, accepted the gifts we gave them? So they declared their allegiance to us, to the French Crown.’
‘And when we smoke the calum
et with the Choctaw, we bind ourselves in allegiance to their neighbour, who is also their oldest and most powerful enemy. It is to be expected that the Chickasaw keep an open door to Carolina. Their eastern boundary is very susceptible to English attack.’
‘So they betray us.’
‘Not yet. But it is by no means improbable.’
The Choctaw chief, who had remained silent, spoke then to Auguste in his tongue. His face was grave.
‘What does he say?’ Babelon demanded impatiently.
‘He suggests we go directly to the Chickasaw and declare our friendship to them. He believes that they are still anxious to keep faith with us, but we must offer them caresses and assure them of our steadfastness.’
Babelon shook his head.
‘That is impossible. We are expected back in Mobile. There is business there that cannot wait.’
‘Surely the commandant–’
‘What the devil has the commandant to do with this?’
Auguste hesitated.
‘I have translated poorly,’ he said at last. ‘The chief is adamant. If we do not go there presently, we risk our friendship with his nation as well as with the Chickasaw.’
‘Well, then we must take that risk,’ Babelon retorted. ‘The Chickasaw are not our only allies in this godforsaken place.’
He glared at Auguste, who flinched and looked down at the ground. The chief of the Choctaw observed them and said nothing. Babelon sighed.
‘Does it not strike you as questionable, how much the honoured chief knows of his enemy’s business?’ he said more gently. ‘If the English have made approaches to the Chickasaw, then it is likely they have come here also. Who is to say that this is not a trap, an ambush?’
‘The chief is a man of honour.’
‘Honour? Auguste, he is a savage. Like all the other savages we have purchased his allegiance with gifts, with guns. Perhaps the English offer better terms. No. Tell the chief that we shall go to the Chickasaw but that first we must warn the commandant. Bienville knows this game of old. If there is something rotten here then he will smell it.’
Auguste hesitated. Then he did as he was bid. He chose his words carefully. The chief frowned. Then he nodded.
