Savage Lands

by Clare Clark

  ‘My husband is in the fields?’ Elisabeth asked.

  ‘It is harvest time,’ Vincente replied, a bewildered elation rising in her chest. This women, who was worn and old, her body misshapen with child, this woman was Elisabeth Savaret.

  ‘And yours? He is there also?’

  Vincente stiffened and in the folds of her apron, her hand tightened around the handle of her knife.

  ‘Your master is away,’ she said sharply. ‘You chose a poor time to run out on us.’

  ‘Yes. Forgive me.’

  ‘You must ask the master for forgiveness. In the meantime there is work to be done. The harvest comes in and no one can be spared.’

  That night Fuerst slept as usual in the wood store, the musket beneath his shoulder. Some time after midnight, Nellie’s waters broke. By dawn, when her husband came for Vincente, the contractions were coming regularly.

  ‘Come, please,’ he said in German. ‘It is her first. She is afraid.’

  Vincente frowned at the Rhinelander in dismay.

  ‘Me? But I – surely one of the other women–’

  ‘They are ignorant. She asks for you.’

  In the yard the whip cracked and the dogs set up a frenzy of barking. Vincente swallowed.

  ‘They will know what to do,’ she said. ‘I – I do not.’

  When she turned away, the Rhinelander caught her by the sleeve. She looked at his fingers, at the broken nails. The creases in his skin were black with dirt.

  ‘Please,’ he stammered and his grip tightened, pinching her skin. ‘Please. I do not know what else to do.’

  Nellie lay on a deerskin in the corner of her dark cabin, her eyes round with fright. The pains were coming regularly and she moaned, her head back and her swollen legs straining against the dirt floor. Her knees were parted. Vincente squeezed her eyes shut. She felt sick.

  ‘Help me,’ Nellie pleaded, gasping for breath. ‘Oh, God in Heaven, help me!’

  ‘I–’ Vincente pressed her fingers against her temples.

  ‘Oh, God–’

  ‘Mme Savaret,’ Vincente said desperately. ‘Mme Savaret shall know what to do.’

  She backed away towards the door.

  ‘Don’t – don’t leave me. The baby – oh, God–’

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t be afraid,’ Vincente said shrilly, and she ran to the door and flung it open. ‘Everything is going to be all right. Elisabeth!’

  She ran to the yard. The savage child stood in the doorway of the kitchen hut, a pile of dirty bowls in her arms.

  ‘Elisabeth!’

  ‘She is gone for water, Madame,’ the child said in French.

  ‘Then fetch her. Now!’

  The girl clattered the bowls to the floor and set off across the yard.

  ‘Tell her Nellie’s baby comes,’ Vincente called after her. ‘Tell her to come quickly.’

  Elisabeth did know what to do. She brought brandy and bear fat and bid Vincente have the child boil water and find clean rags. When she slid her hand between the Rhinelander’s thighs, Vincente had to turn away, but Elisabeth did not flinch. She gave Nellie instructions in a low, clear voice that seemed to calm her. Shaky with relief, Vincente clasped the labouring woman’s hand and wiped her brow with a cloth soaked in cool water and tried not to see the streaks of blood that striped the woman’s mottled legs.

  It was a long labour but not a difficult one. That night, a little after the men had finished their supper, the child was born. Nellie had long since ceased her hollering and the cabin was hushed, the air hung about with tallow smoke and shadows. Vincente watched as Elisabeth deftly knotted and cut the cord and slapped the infant on the back. The scream was tiny and furious, raw with newness.

  ‘A boy,’ she said, and she placed him onto his mother’s belly. He lay there, curled tight into the familiar shape of it, slick with blood and rheum and a whitish scum like the curds of cheese, the stump of his birth string like a twist of purplish meat, and Nellie took him in her arms and Vincente looked up at Elisabeth and they smiled, both of them, at the wonder of it.

  ‘It’s sore, I know,’ Elisabeth said when Nellie wept. ‘But you’ll heal.’

  Later, Elisabeth and Vincente walked together up to the yard. The night was soft, the stars strewn like fine white flour across the sky. Glory to God, who has created Heaven and earth, Vincente thought, and though she could not remember the verse exactly, she was filled with a quiet awe.

  ‘A child of the New World,’ Elisabeth said, and there was wonder in her voice also. ‘It will not be strange to them, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t know. I think every place is strange to a child.’

  ‘Alone, perhaps. But held in the arms of their mother?’

  Vincente shrugged.

  ‘Then it is stranger still.’

  Elisabeth said nothing. Vincente watched the tips of her worn slippers as they nudged at her skirts. At the top of the slope, she turned towards her cabin.

  ‘Goodnight then,’ she said. ‘I am glad you were here. For Nellie’s sake.’

  Elisabeth did not answer.

  ‘Praise God,’ Vincente said. ‘A fine strong boy.’

  ‘Let us hope he makes a better place of these lands than we have managed.’

  Elisabeth’s sprigged gown was an ashy smudge on the darkness, her face obscured by shadow.

  ‘The slave girl,’ Vincente said suddenly. ‘The child. She is my husband’s, isn’t she?’

  The words clung to the fleshy air.

  ‘Marguerite belongs to me,’ Elisabeth said finally.

  ‘That is not what I meant.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Her mother was Yasoux. Her father was French. Both are dead.’

  ‘I have friends, you know, in Mobile. They have told me everything.’

  ‘Naturally they have. They cannot help themselves. But in this they are mistaken.’

  ‘And the parish records, they are mistaken also?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My husband is the child’s father. He signed his name.’

  ‘That it is written does not make it so.’

  ‘Then if my husband is not the father, who is?’

  ‘Mine.’

  Vincente gaped.

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘The child’s mother was our slave. She was very beautiful. My husband bought her. Or stole her. I don’t know. Then – when my husband died, Auguste – your husband – he thought that if he could only – he took her away. I think he thought I did not know, that no one knew. When the child came, he claimed she was his.’

  ‘And why would he do that?’

  ‘To spare me. To spare my husband. He was always kind to us both.’

  Vincente shook her head disbelievingly.

  ‘Then why does he still not have her?’

  ‘Because I begged him to sell.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘So that I might not forget.’

  ‘Your husband’s sin?’

  ‘My own.’

  Vincente stared at the dark lace of the trees and at the star that rose beyond them that seemed suddenly to shine brighter than the rest. Above her the bats swooped, spatters of black against the mercury sky.

  ‘It is a pretty story,’ Vincente said, and she pinched her mouth shut.

  ‘Not so very pretty. My husband did not know how to love. I think perhaps neither did I. We did not deserve so faithful a friend as Auguste Guichard.’

  It was the tenderness that Vincente could not endure, the softening of her voice. Her belly squeezed in the old familiar way, flooding her with the furious misery of righteousness.

  ‘May the Lord forgive your lies,’ she hissed. ‘I know the girl is his!’

  Elisabeth was silent. Then she turned and walked away.

  ‘Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge,’ Vincente called after her. ‘And liars too!’

  There was a long silence,
and then Elisabeth’s quiet voice reaching back to her through the night. There was no anger in it, only a piercing sorrow.

  ‘If you think I lie, look at the child. Jean-Claude, my–’ She broke off. When she spoke again it was so softly that Vincente could hardly hear her. ‘She is his in every particular.’

  Vincente thought of Anne Negrette, who had called Elisabeth’s marriage a great union of love, and of Germaine Vessaille, who was big with her seventh child.

  ‘A wise friend once told me that if there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love. And I pitied him.’ Elisabeth gasped, a strangled splutter. ‘I pitied him.’

  For a while Vincente said nothing. ‘What friend?’ she asked at last. ‘Was it my husband?’

  ‘Your husband?’ Elisabeth sounded startled. ‘No, no, it was not him.’

  Vincente wrapped her arms around herself. For the first time she thought: a child of our own.

  ‘I thought I understood,’ Elisabeth said softly. ‘I thought I grew wise too.’

  ‘Perhaps you did.’

  ‘No. I thought – I have done such terrible things.’

  ‘We are all sinners. At the Day of Judgement, the Lord shall be merciful.’

  ‘No,’ Elisabeth murmured. ‘No. Not to me.’

  Vincente held up her hands.

  ‘What could you have done,’ she asked, ‘that is too bad to be forgiven?’

  But Elisabeth was gone.

  HE SAW HER first. The yard was silent, and she was quite alone but for a yellow dog that slept in the shade of the live oak. He saw her but he did not call out to her. He did not know why exactly, except that there was a breathlessness to the moment, the quiet expectancy of the not-yet, that he was not ready to relinquish. The dog stirred, lifting its head as he crossed the yard, his feet muffled by the dust, his breath barely stirring the air. The nape of her neck was pale above her collar, and her mouth puckered as she fixed upon the dip and pull of the stitches. He could see the rise and fall of her chest, the glint of perspiration on her forehead.

  He was but a few steps away from her when she looked up. He saw immediately that he had misjudged things, that he should have called out to her, given her time to compose herself. There was something almost prurient about his proximity, her unguarded self as pale and private as unclothed flesh. She fumbled the sewing as she scrambled to her feet, ducking her head so that he could not see the confusion in her eyes.

  ‘You are back,’ she mumbled.

  ‘I am back.’

  There was a silence. Under the live oak, the yellow dog hauled itself to its feet and, its tongue lolling from its mouth, limped across the yard to settle at Auguste’s feet. Slowly Auguste reached out and took her hand. She did not pull it away. She set her other palm against his shirt, so that he felt the press of the rough knots against his chest. They stood there like that for a long moment and the silence between them grew thick, bound over and over with the filaments of unspoken words.

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ she said.

  It was disquieting, the way her face was at the same time strange and quite familiar. She had a freckle on the lobe of her left ear. He could not recall if he had known that before. She was nearly as tall as he was.

  ‘You look tired,’ he said.

  ‘The harvest, it is nearly all brought in. And Nellie’s baby is come. A son, Karl, for his father.’

  ‘That is fine news.’

  ‘The Negro who sickened is improved.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And Elisabeth Savaret is returned.’

  He had expected it. His face did not change.

  ‘Fuerst will be glad,’ he said evenly.

  Vincente turned away, bending down to retrieve her mending. The needle glinted, dangling from its thread.

  ‘You will find her at the lower settlement. The child too.’

  ‘Perhaps later.’

  She hesitated. Then she reached for the needle, sliding it into the collar of the shirt.

  ‘You must be hungry,’ she said.

  ‘Not too much. The Ouma gave me victuals for the journey.’

  She nodded, folding the shirt and setting it in the basket on the bench. This time the silence between them was empty.

  ‘I must find Fuerst,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘I shall see you later,’ she said, and without looking at him, she picked up the mending basket and walked away into the cabin.

  ‘Wait,’ he cried as she pushed at the door with her shoulder, and it startled him, to speak without thinking. ‘Wait.’

  She paused, the basket jutted on her hip, as the words jostled inside him, forming and reforming themselves into ever more impossible patterns. He opened his mouth and closed it again. His bad shoulder ached. He took a deep breath.

  ‘I–’ he tried. ‘That is to say–’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Perhaps I am a little hungry after all.’

  They walked together to the kitchen hut. Vincente pulled a key from the pocket of her apron and unlocked it.

  ‘So you see I am become the mistress of the house,’ she said lightly.

  ‘It becomes you.’

  ‘On the contrary. Look, my hands are the soles of two worn-out slippers.’

  She gestured at Auguste with her palms, but when he reached out to take them she laughed awkwardly and snatched them back. Auguste watched her as she took down a plate and set upon it some cold cornbread and roasted pumpkin. She moved about the small space with an easy familiarity, reaching down salt and a heel of cheese from the higher shelf without fumbling. It was not difficult to imagine her here in the dark.

  ‘Eat with me,’ he said, and he held out a piece of pumpkin.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Please. I should like it. Eat with me.’

  She hesitated. Then she took the pumpkin from him and put it in her mouth. She chewed it, her jaw working as though it were a gristly piece of meat, and swallowed.

  ‘There,’ she said, and she dragged the back of her hand over her lips.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She blinked, looking away from him. There was a long pause.

  ‘The Chetimachas desire peace, I am sure of it,’ he said at last. ‘They are tired of fighting always with their neighbours who are our allies.’

  Vincente nodded, her face still turned away.

  ‘Do you know,’ he went on in the same conversational tone, so that she would not know that he saw her tears, ‘one of the Ouma warriors asked me why the white man is never content. When I asked him why he supposed such a thing, he said that the white man is always frowning and his eyes bulge from his head as though he seeks something he can never find.’

  Vincente pressed her fingers to her eyes.

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘I said that while the savage steals his property and makes war against him, the white man has no choice but to be vigilant. As for the frowning, he must squint all day against the relentless Louisiana sun.’

  Vincente smiled a little then, and he was glad of it. They stood side by side without speaking in the cramped kitchen hut and there was peace in it. It did not matter that it was not true, that he had said nothing at all but only listened in silence as Tohto declared it the fate of the white man to go mad, because he thought with his head, while the savage thought with the heart and might therefore walk the true path, untroubled by the dodges and deceits of the intellect. He had listened and watched the fire as it burned itself out, and he had reflected how curious it was that any man may sometimes speak the truth, whether he be a scholar or a perfect fool. Tohto was a braggart and usually drunk, for he traded skins for eau-de-vie and he was a fine hunter. He had seldom been right about anything but hunting.

  In the yard the cow set up a plaintive lowing.

  ‘She wants milking,’ Vincente said, covering the dish of pumpkin and setting it back on the shelf. ‘I must go.�
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  ‘You have learned to milk?’

  ‘I have learned many things. You have been gone a while.’

  She hesitated, her hands lifted. There were dark patches beneath her arms. His stomach tightened but he did not move.

  ‘I have to milk the cow,’ she said.

  He meant to go to the fields. He walked out beyond the Negro enclosure and along the edge of the forest before his steps circled around and took him along the lower path into the men’s settlement. The yellow dog followed him a little way. Then it was gone.

  The ramshackle cabins drowsed in the heat. Behind the fire circle, the calico bushes were shrouded with drying laundry, and the low-hanging branches of the moss-oak blossomed with battered pans and kettles. In the shade the child looked up from the half-made basket in her lap, her fingers twisted among the sharp filaments of palmetto. He walked slowly towards her.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  The girl blinked up at him. She was thin and none too clean, her dark hair tangled about her face. Still, the resemblance was striking.

  ‘You are the new master,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t remember you.’

  ‘No. But I remember you.’

  Tucked into the child’s lap was a doll of blackened Spanish wig. It had a dress of woven grass and startled shell eyes that stared at Auguste from between the palmetto bars of the unfinished basket.

  ‘Your mistress,’ he asked. ‘Is she here?’

  The girl shook her head.

  ‘She is at the bayou. Today is laundry day.’

  ‘Which way?’

  At the edge of the yard, he turned. The child held her doll close against her face, whispering something into its black ear. When she saw him watching her, she stopped speaking and sat up a little straighter. The two of them, girl and doll, stared at him with their round eyes. He raised his hand. Then he turned and made his way down through the canebrake to the creek.

  She was not alone. Another woman, one of the Rhinelanders, bent over the washboard, her hair a rough rope against the damp of her bodice and her sleeves rolled up above the elbow to reveal strong red arms. Beside her Elisabeth was thin as a child. Both women wore burlap aprons over their knotted-up skirts and straggly palmetto bonnets that shaded their faces from the sun. In the brown water their bare legs were pale as fish.