Savage Lands

by Clare Clark

  NO ONE THOUGHT Auguste would survive the journey. He was feverish, his wounds corrupted and the bone badly broken. He cried out when they lifted him and laid him in the bottom of a pirogue upon a bed of skins and Spanish beard. As they made their way south towards Mobile, the Jesuit, who had learned something of native medicine during his time among the Nassitoches, applied a poultice of the root of the cotton tree to his damaged shoulder and had his boy dribble a hot decoction of china root between his lips to promote sweating.

  It had taken all Rochon’s guile and persuasiveness to convince the high minko to release the injured man into his care. He had been obliged to remind him several times of the brutal reprisals that had followed the murder of the French missionary Saint-Cosmé by the Chitimacha ten years before, and the perpetual state of war that had since blighted that once-great savage nation. As for the ambush, he pledged an oath in God that the French commandant would not rest until the agitators were uncovered and turned over to the Chickasaw for punishment. Thus would the two nations be reconciled, drawing their alliance afresh in the blood of a common foe.

  The priests at the seminary in Quebec, who some fifteen years before had struggled vainly to contain their pupil’s merriness, would surely have been startled to observe him possessed of such sombre authority as he displayed before the elders of the Chickasaw, but then a man may find himself possessed of considerable gravity when he holds the life of another in his hands. The high minko, mistrustful of the Jesuit but more fearful of plunging the Chickasaw once more into a bloody war with France and all her savage allies, reluctantly concurred. He promised a pitiless revenge if the white man failed him.

  Their course to the settlement was a straightforward one, for the upper reaches of the Mobile River would bear them directly to the coast. Still, it was a perilous journey. The winter had been wet and the river was unruly, roaring into unexpected rapids and rolling with rotted trees. They could not be certain that the Chickasaw did not double-cross them. They dared not hunt, or light a fire, or make camp in the open spaces by the river. Nor did they consider it prudent to take refuge with the Choctaw. Instead they travelled at night, risking the treacheries of the stream so that they might evade discovery, and when daylight came they set their baires in the tangled confusion of deep forest, always posting one of their number as a sentry to keep watch.

  As the days passed, Auguste grew hectic with delirium. His dreams pitched and plunged on the black water and in the heat of fever they were thick with the bodies of the dead and dying, their skulls striking dully against the hull of the pirogue, their nails scoring its bark. He saw pale fingers that reached up from the depths to pluck at him and woke screaming to the ministrations of the boy, who closed his hand over Auguste’s mouth and hissed at him to hold his tongue.

  It took thirteen nights to gain the boundary of the settlement. By then Auguste’s fever was broken and he was quiet, his breathing weak but steady. As soon he was able, Rochon sent word to the commandant only to discover that the Sieur had been summoned to the Spanish fort at Pensacola on a matter of urgency and was not expected back for some days. The Jesuit had been away from the settlement for some years, but he had not forgotten the town’s aptitude for intrigue and alarmism. Informing the commissary only that he had arrived as instructed, he returned his patient under cover of darkness to his own house on the rue Condé, taking care to promise Auguste’s slave recompense if she kept her master’s presence there a secret.

  Quiet at last and still, Auguste slowly regained his senses, though his shattered shoulder continued to trouble him greatly. The slave treated his wounds with sassafras and brought him infusions of white willow bark to muffle the pain, but the skin of it was no thicker than the skin on hot milk and the pain was always there when he moved, sickening and exultant. During the first long nights, when exhaustion unshackled his spine and stretched the skin on his face tight over his skull, he tried to steal around the edges of it, in search of the places where sleep was, but his dreams were wild and bright with fear, and when he startled awake the anguish of movement caused him to cry out. He drifted through the dark hours in a haze of fatigue and pain, time crumpling and stretching so that minutes lasted hours, and then suddenly at midnight it was dawn and the slanting sun caught the platille at the window and set it alight.

  When he saw the gleam of white in the darkness, he thought it was the moon grown suddenly full, or perhaps the sun come up without him, and he glanced at the window, but there was no light in it, and the platille was dark as a drawn curtain against the night. He closed his eyes so that he might not see what was not there. It distressed him, how fearful he had grown of himself, and he thought to call for the slave, so that she might bring him willow tea and tallow lights and the ordinary reassurance of her presence in the room. And then there was the scrabble of feet on his legs, claws sharp through the blankets, the press of soft fur against his forearm.

  ‘Ponola?’ he whispered and, though his shoulder screamed, he lifted the opossum onto his lap and held its slight body tightly to him. It squirmed, stretching up its muzzle towards his face, its cold, damp nose nudging his chin. It was then that he saw the girl. She stood at the foot of the bed, her dark hair tangled like shadows across her face, and her eyes were bright in the darkness.

  ‘I’ve taken good care of her,’ she murmured. ‘Just like I promised.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  She said nothing more but only nodded, fixing him with her fierce eyes. When dawn came the slave found her curled into a question mark on the dirt floor, her frown pressed smooth by sleep and her arms folded into a pillow beneath her head. The opossum raised its head from its nest among the bed rugs, sniffing the air as the savage carried in the dishes of tea and watery gruel and set them on the stool beside the bed. When Auguste opened his eyes, she helped him to sit.

  ‘She come every day,’ she murmured quietly as she spooned the hot liquid into his mouth. ‘When you gone. Watch the house. Watch the garden boys. Every day the same.’

  Auguste swallowed, waiting for the sedative to congeal over the pain in his shoulder. The girl did not stir. But she opened her eyes a crack, like a child playing hide-and-seek, and watched as the slave fed Auguste and changed the dressings on his shoulder.

  ‘I could do that,’ she said when the slave had gathered up the dishes and the dirty bandages and taken them outside. ‘I am good at taking care of things.’

  ‘You should go home,’ he said gently. ‘Your father will be expecting you.’

  But the girl only shook her head and picked at a splinter on the bedpost, and Auguste closed his eyes as the pain blurred and the sleep inside him grew stronger.

  ‘You should go,’ he said again later. ‘You are not supposed to know I am here.’

  ‘Going away won’t stop me from knowing.’

  And she dipped the dipper into the pitcher of water on the stool beside him and held it to his mouth and, though she spilled it down his chin, Auguste drank and said nothing, because her stubbornness was a solid thing that turned like dust in the room. The day lengthened and he drifted in and out of himself, and when the scream in his shoulder roused him she was still there and the opossum was a warm almost-weight on his legs and he slept a little more and his dreams were ragged and strange but there was no blood in them.

  When he woke again it was dusk. The slave moved silently about the room, lighting a tallow lamp that she set beside his bed and fetching the gruel that she had set upon the table. Auguste roused himself groggily, fumbling among the rugs for the opossum, but it was gone.

  ‘The girl?’ he asked as the slave knelt beside him, raising the spoon to his lips, and the slave said nothing but only jerked her head at the door, and Auguste let his head fall back upon the pillows so that the spoon rattled against his teeth, spilling hot gruel down his chin.

  The door banged open. Auguste looked up as the girl staggered in, clutching the slopping pitcher before her. The front of her dress was soaked through.


  ‘We must have a new pitcher,’ she declared breathlessly. ‘This one spills.’

  It was on the eighth day, which was the Sabbath, when the knock came at the yard door, two sharp raps. It was late, the lights of the settlement extinguished. Auguste heard the girl and then the murmur of a man’s voice on the back stoop. His stomach closed like a fist. When the girl came back into the cabin she was alone. She shut the door, her thin arms clamped across her chest.

  ‘It’s the commandant,’ she said.

  Auguste breathed out.

  ‘Then we should let him in.’

  The girl scowled.

  ‘It has been bad for you today.’

  ‘I am well enough for the commandant. Go. Bring him in.’

  The girl made to say something. Then, still scowling, she turned and walked slowly towards the door. Using his good arm, Auguste pressed his fist into the mattress, knuckles white, and struggled to sit up.

  Bienville stayed with Auguste for almost one hour. From where she squatted on the stoop, the girl could hear his voice, a low rumble that rose from time to time to an angry clatter like a thunderstorm. She could not hear Auguste. When at last the commandant took his leave, he left as he had come, slipping out through the backyard, taking the narrow alley that led out onto rue de Pontchartrain. It was a dark night, the new moon brittle as a bitten wafer. The girl watched him from the shadowed porch, her arms tight around the opossum. When she was certain he had gone, she stood and very quietly pushed open the door to the cabin.

  Auguste was sitting on the side of the bed, his feet on the floor, his good arm wedged against the bedpost as he struggled to push himself upward. His face was chalk white and glazed with sweat.

  ‘Quickly,’ he said, and she ran to him, untangling the twisted bed rugs to release his legs. Then she bent down and took the chamber pot from its place beneath the bed.

  ‘No,’ he muttered, and the word caught stickily in his mouth. ‘Not that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Go to the tavern on rue Saint-François. Tell Ensign Babelon your father wishes to see him. A matter of business. Tell him there is profit in it.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘Tell him to meet him at the old Daraque cabin at the back of town. One hour.’

  The girl kicked at the chamber pot. Then she shook her head.

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Do not refuse me. I must see the ensign tonight.’

  ‘I cannot,’ she said again, and she stared at the floor.

  ‘For the love of God, child, are you become my gaoler?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  She raised her head and stared at him with her black eyes, chewing at her lips, her fingers twisting before her in knots.

  ‘My father is dead.’

  There was a silence. Then Auguste cleared his throat.

  ‘When?’

  ‘A few months maybe. Summertime.’

  ‘The scourge?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I – I am sorry. I had not heard.’

  The girl shrugged and scuffed at the floor with her bare foot. Auguste sagged against the pillow, suddenly overcome with pain and weariness. He thought of the locksmith, his red eyes sloppy in their sockets as he drained another mug of savage liquor, and of the dilapidated cabin that flooded every spring, the mud slippery as seaweed on the walls, and the prospect of rising from the bed defeated him.

  ‘Moquin,’ she said. ‘I take messages sometimes for him.’

  ‘Moquin.’

  ‘The powder-maker. He is my neighbour. Might I tell the ensign I brought word from him?’

  ‘The powder-maker.’

  ‘Yes. I could go now.’

  Her unexpected eagerness was unbearable. Auguste shook his head, jarring his shoulder, and closed his eyes. The pounding in his shoulder jostled with an overwhelming lethargy, blotting out words, stopping his tongue.

  ‘Tomorrow, then?’ When he did not reply she nodded to herself. ‘Tomorrow is better. You shall be stronger tomorrow.’

  She stood by his bed. The fierceness came off her like heat. He tried to reach for it but the pull of sleep was stronger, drawing him down, closing over him like water.

  Immediately the commandant stood before him once again, his face tight with anger.

  ‘A trap. A trap of our making. That was what the Englishman told the Chickasaw elders. How else to explain a French trader in their village offering guns in exchange for Choctaw prisoners only weeks after the Choctaw had reaffirmed their allegiance to France? Of course it stank of treachery. It would have been a simple matter then to convince the Chickasaw that they had been duped, that if they did as the Frenchman urged and raided the Choctaw village for prisoners, they would be walking straight into a Choctaw ambush. That is why they came for you.’

  Auguste shifted, sending a shriek of pain down his side. But, though he pressed the fingers of his good hand hard against his eyes, he could not extinguish the expression on the commandant’s face.

  ‘Those duplicitous English bastards. It’s so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming. They knew that we had approached the Chickasaw, feared any alliance we had brokered might hold. So they set about destroying it. They chose a village far from the minko, a village where the warriors are restless and ill-disciplined, easily persuaded to bloodshed for profit. A village seldom visited by white men. They knew that the warriors would not ask questions, that if their man spoke Mobilian in the French manner the Chickasaw would think him one of ours. Once the deal was struck all it took was an English accomplice to alert the minko to the treachery of their allies. The minko told the Jesuit that this so-called Frenchman paid the Chickasaw in English muskets, for pity’s sake, English gunpowder. If he had raised the English standard there he could not have made it plainer.’

  It seemed to Auguste that the bones in his shoulder were hot coals, branding his damaged flesh. He cried out for the slave and the girl came, her eyes heavy with sleep, and in a whisper he begged her for willow tea. She stayed with him as the slave prepared it, and when it was ready he gulped greedily at the hot liquid, burning his tongue. And still there was no relief. He lay in the darkness, his eyes wide open, as the commandant’s words marched around his head, pounding to the throb of his broken shoulder.

  ‘We shall get the bastard who did this to you, I give you my word. Blood for blood, Auguste, blood for blood. Savage law must prevail. Whether it is us who find him first or the Chickasaw, that bastard son of an English whore is going to wish that he had never been born.’

  IN THE EVENT there was no need for Auguste to send the girl for Babelon. He came himself, the very next day. It was early, the waking sun stretching its arms above the trees, and outside the slave lit the fire for breakfast. He did not knock. As he flung the door of the cabin open, the girl lifted her head.

  ‘Here a week, at death’s door, and not one word? For the love of God, man!’

  Auguste stared at his friend as though he hardly recognised him, his eyes raw from lack of sleep. Though his shoulder ached, there was a numb emptiness at the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Why the hell did you not send word to me? I did not even know you were back.’ Babelon strode across the room. He had grown thin since Auguste had last seen him. His handsome face was drawn, his eyes pouched and restive, the whites yellowed and shot with red. When he frowned, it caused a muscle in his cheek to jump. ‘Vierge, Auguste, what the devil did those bastards do to you? You look like hell.’

  Auguste bit his lip.

  ‘Look at you. I mean, how could they? Those – those goddamned barbarians. How could they?’

  ‘They thought I wished them dead.’

  Babelon shook his head, his face jumpy with disbelief. He almost spoke, then seemed to think better of it. Instead he paced the cabin, picking things up and putting them down. When the slave came in with tea, he stood so that she might pass him, but he was not still. His legs jumped, his feet tapping the floor and
his flexed fingers beating out a rhythm, his body restive as a wasps’ nest, Auguste thought suddenly, every part of him constantly shifting and remaking itself.

  ‘It was an Englishman, Bienville says, who betrayed us,’ Babelon said when the slave was gone out. ‘It is proved apparently, there is not the least doubt of it. So I am to go there, to the Chickasaw. I am to see what I can find out about him.’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t look at me like that. The commandant brought the order to me himself. At dawn, which tells you something. Sieur Bienville has long considered the early hours the preserve of songbirds and slaves. My Chickasaw is lamentable, I know, but he has promised me a translator. I asked for you, of course.’

  The ensign twisted his lips into an almost-smile. Then his mouth jumped and it was gone. Auguste said nothing. Beside him a feather of steam rose from the untouched dish of willow tea.

  ‘I – God, Auguste. What the devil did they do to you?’

  ‘Nothing that they would not have done to any traitor.’

  Babelon rubbed his face briskly. Then he began, once more, to pace the cabin.

  ‘Bienville said it was the Jesuit Rochon who found you, persuaded the Chickasaw to let you go. What a blessed piece of luck. The guy’s an insufferable arse-pot, of course, but, sweet Jesus, if he had not happened to be passing through–’

  ‘I find it best not to think on it.’

  Babelon snorted.

  ‘I don’t suppose we could arrange for him to be roughed up a little in his turn, could we? Missioner or not, I could swear that smug bastard has eyes for my wife.’

  The anger came quite unexpectedly, rising like vomit in Auguste’s throat.

  ‘Why are you come here?’ he demanded. ‘What is it you want from me?’

  Babelon blinked at him.

  ‘You think you can come here and make your little jokes and it will all be as it always was? Please. Do you think I don’t know? That I wouldn’t work it out?’