Half-dazed, François made his way back to the sawmill and Nicolas. “The bastard Tournaire got away,” he said, breathing heavily. He leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees while he got his second wind. His gaze passed over the grisly sight of the soldier whose windpipe had been ripped from his throat, then moved on to Nicolas. Silent, the half-breed sat back on his haunches, stroking the blood-matted fur of the lifeless sled dog.
“Foutre!” François spat. “An entire year’s work—gone. The best furs ever taken. All because of that frigging Jesuit! Now I don’t dare show my handsome face around here again.”
Nicolas lifted the bark spread with melted resin from the fire and crossed to Vincente’s commandeered canoe. “You might try testing your prowess on the Eskimo maidens. The Jesuits’ influence doesn’t stretch that far north, mon ami."
François grunted. “The Arctic is too far north. My one trip with you quickly convinced me. To live there, a man has to have blood like brandy, a body of brass, and eyes of glass.”
“Then I suppose our partnership must end here.” Nicolas laid the stripped birch bark over the hole in the canoe’s hull and ran his fingers along the patch’s edges, sealing its fringes with the melted resin. “What will you do now?”
He blinked at the smoke that twisted upward from the fire. “I don’t know. I’m thirty-three and still have my fortune to make. I do know I don’t want to go back to France.”
“And you can’t stay here.”
François’s head snapped up, his face brightening. His eyes flashed with the first enthusiasm he had felt in months. “Nicolas, listen to me! Why not go south instead of north? They say that some of the richest fur-bearing country is in the Illinois territory, still untapped. Just waiting for us.”
Nicolas looked over his shoulder at him but said nothing.
“What is there to hold you here?” he pressed. “No family, no business, no ties.”
“All right,” Nicolas replied at length. “You may have something there. But I propose we expand our venture if we’re to make this fortune of yours.”
He canted his head and lifted his brows quizzically. “You have a suggestion?”
“Yes. Trading with both the French and the Spanish—and the Indians. In No Man’s Land.”
François thought for a minute. He knew as much as the next man about the area called No Man’s Land, which wasn’t that much—only what was gleaned from occasional travelers coming up from the lower reaches of the Mississippi.
No Man’s Land was a strip of neutral territory extending several miles on either side of the Arroyo Hondo, which was accepted as the boundary between the French outpost of Louisiana, Natchitoches, and the Spanish one of Texas, Los Adais, which was the capital of Texas.
“Pourquoipas?" he said, grinning at Nicolas. “We have nothing else better to do.”
One glimpse, three months later, at the remote French outpost and he was ready to recant his agreement. Poste de la St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches, the oldest town in the vast region claimed by French Louisiana, was little more than a palisade of logs erected along the wooded banks of the Riviere Rouge and fringed by a scattering of cabins in the surrounding hills. The fort contained barracks, chapel, powderhouse, kitchen, outdoor oven, and guardhouse.
This was in contrast to San Miguel Arcangel de Linares de Los Adais, which was fifteen miles away and consisted solely of a Spanish mission and presidio.
That August, he and Nicolas constructed a rudimentary log cabin. Shirtless and sweating in a merciless sun, he cursed eloquently and constantly. When the ax handle broke in his hands, he complained, “I could’ve earned more money and fewer blisters in the navy.”
Nicolas continued to swing the ax, the muscles rippling beneath the cinnamon-colored skin. “But think of the pack trains that will pass between here and San Antonio de Bexar. Your pack trains, mon ami."
François was tired and sore—and pent-up with the need to bury himself in a woman. He had gone too long without one. The few women he had met at the fort were all married. Not that that would have halted him, but he would not sneak about; on the other hand, he didn’t want to have to battle an enraged husband.
“And just where do I acquire ‘my’ pack trains, do tell?” he asked, feeling out of sorts.
The ringing of the ax stopped, and Nicolas wiped his brow with the back of his arm. “You acquire your pack trains by selling the wild horses we are going to capture.”
“You’re talking about riding into Comanche territory. I think I’d rather face the Jesuit torture racks.”
Nicolas shrugged his shoulders. His white teeth, good teeth, lightened the dark face. “I get along well with the savages.”
“Then you go for the horses.” François chunked the heavy ax head at the ground. “I’m going for a woman.”
Nicolas grunted. “So you’ve heard about the bride ships?”
The Mississippi River was “all ears,” and gossip invariably traveled from its mouth northward a thousand miles. This time the word went out that young women out of orphanages were coming from France and that bachelors on the scene when they arrived would either have prime choice or draw lots to have the first pick.
“I heard. And I’m ready for a wife.”
“You’re ready for bedding whatever you can get. And that’s about what you’re going to get, a grab-bag selection of virgins who are whores—and the pox.”
François could feel his temper rising with the heat off the baked earth. “I won’t live like you, Nicolas. Like a savage.”
The black eyes slitted. “Are you certain you know how to live like a gentleman?”
François had taken just about enough that afternoon. He lashed out with his right fist. Too late, he saw Nicolas sidestep and drive his knuckles forward and upward, just below his ribs. He gasped, the breath whooshed from his lungs, and he fell onto his knees.
His eyes widened as another, different pain shot through all his nerve endings. There was no air in him left with which to scream. “The ax head . . .’’It was a raw, agonized whisper.
§ CHAPTER NINE §
Colony of Louisiana
September 1722
Blessed sunlight fell on Natalie’s face when she emerged from the Baleine's hold along with the rest of the human flotsam or “brides.” For a moment, she shadowed her eyes from the piercing glare with her forearm.
The previous season, the Baleine had brought a cargo of blacks from the Guinea coast. The brig reeked of urine and sweat and death and fear. Not all of the filles de joie had survived the trip. The food was moldy and sometimes rotten, the water, stale and usually impure.
Natalie, the only one among the eighty-eight casket girls who could read, saw the contemptuous notations scrawled next to the girls’ names on the shipping list: “Perfect Pig,” “Confirmed Debauchee,” “Knife Wielder,” and, next to her name, “Delusions of Grandeur.” Of the three hundred and twenty-five émigrés, sixteen from the ages of seventeen to thirty-eight were branded on their shoulders with the infamous fleur-de-lis, marking them as the most dangerous, the most jaded of the bunch. Natalie’s brand, imprinted between her breasts, remained hidden, but she carried its true imprint on her spirit as well.
With Jeanne-Antoinette clutching her hand, she staggered across the deck to the railing. The sunspots that danced before her eyes faded, and the shoreline of the New World took shape. Ship Island was the closet the bride convoy could moor to Fort Biloxi, ten nautical miles away. The marshy isle was a desolate place with a few withered trees and sand that reflected blindingly the torturously brilliant, tropical sunlight, but it did have two freshwater ponds where the Baleine and the other two vessels could refill their casks.
Landing conditions were chaotic. The cargo and humans were transferred to swaying and leaky barges. Natalie made sure that Jeanne-Antoinette stayed with her as they were herded onto a lorry with large wheels that was pushed out across the sand into the water. Ahead of them, a cart was upset and the women flounde
red waist-deep in water, shouting and screaming like harpies.
Her fingers dug into the lorry’s wooden side. She shut her lids against the broiling sunlight and whispered an Ave Maria. Sweat streamed down the sides of her rib cage and along her inner thighs. Nowhere . . . Not one place for shade, no vine-strewn stone walls like that in Maison Bellecour’s cool gardens, no pastel shades of flowering arches of entwined wisteria.
No food, no water, no escape—and there was the blistering sun.
There were times, such as when she lost the baby, that she wished she had died with it. If it were not for Philippe, if it were not for the one hope of being reunited with him one day . . . She opened her eyes, lifted her chin, and willed her expression into unruffled acceptance of what was to happen.
At her side, Jeanne-Antoinette fought back quiet, little sobs. “Hush, my sweet,” Natalie told the girl. “Soon we’ll reach shore and some kind of shelter, I’m certain.”
“Ma mère, mon père.” The girl wiped at the tears that glistened on her olive cheeks. The dark braids about her round, little face were matted with filth. Natalie knew her hair was straggly with dirt also. She didn’t care anymore. “They will wonder what happened to me.” The girl hiccoughed. “I want to go back, to go home!”
“You will one day.” A lie, most likely, but what else could she say?
On her other side, Solange, a coarse, dishwater-blond whore, jeered, “I suppose the comtesse will write to the king and set this misunderstanding aright.” She peered around Natalie and said to Jeanne-Antoinette, “Well, you’ll never leave the place. You’re condemned here for life, do you understand? For life. And if you think differently, you’re as daft as this one is, putting on airs and behaving like royalty, will you believe!”
Jeanne-Antoinette buried her head in her hands and began to weep again. Natalie stared the whore down until the young woman tossed her brassy blond head and looked away.
Soon the mainland came into view, a long, undulating, towering line of deep green. Trees! Shade! Other carts were already unloading their share of immigrants, and she searched among the cluster of confused, lost souls for Hervé’s solid physique.
A line of archers were holding back a score or more of anxious men, a spindly looking lot. Of course, Natalie thought scornfully, prospective bridegrooms. A grizzle-haired gentleman who seemed to be in charge was overseeing the landing, sending some of the women to join one group, directing others to another.
The wheels of the cart crunched against dry sand, and its human contents spilled onto the shore. Dazed, Natalie followed the women ahead of her. Amazement and despair were written on their faces. Some stared stupidly at their surroundings. Others laughed or cried hysterically.
Natalie and Jeanne-Antoinette joined the other women from their cart to cluster beneath the merciful shade of moss-covered live oaks whose branches hung down like the sides of a green, leafy tent. Jeanne-Antoinette dropped to her knees, crouching next to Natalie.
Presently, the man Natalie had noticed earlier approached them and-introduced himself as the governor of the province, Sieur de Bienville. Like his soldiers, he was dressed in a blue woolen uniform, but his was spangled with gold braid. With a sardonic twist to his lips, he welcomed them to the “paradise” and then began reading a list of names in a stentorian voice:
“Françoise Boisrenaud, Jeanne-Catherine Travernier, Marguerite Duanet, Louise Dufresne . . .” He called perhaps twenty more names, then pronounced their destination: “the outpost of Pascagoula.
The women were separated and led away, and the process was repeated, this time the destination being a place called Yazoo. The next group of names, numbering only three, were appointed to the French wilderness post of Arkansas; then Black River received four casket girls. Natalie held her breath, hoping. The chances appeared good that she and Jeanne-Antoinette would be together. Several more girls were apportioned to the villages of Cannes Brulees and Fort Mobile, named for the local Mauvila Indians. Then Jeanne-Antoinette’s name was called first of the next grouping but not Natalie’s. The girl was to be sent to Fort Rosalie, wherever that was.
Jeanne-Antoinette clung to Natalie’s skirts. “Noooo!” she cried when two of Bienville’s soldiers, uniformed in sweat-stained, ragged jackets with missing pewter buttons, came to pry her away.
Natalie inserted herself between Jeanne-Antoinette and one of the guards. “Wait!” she pleaded. “Let me have just a minute with the girl. Can’t you see she is nothing but a child?”
She turned to Jeanne-Antoinette and cupped the girl’s distraught face between her palms. “Listen, my sweet, it will be all right. You must believe me. I will do something. Trust me.”
Then the soldiers tore Jeanne-Antoinette away from her. Concern for the child had kept thoughts for her own welfare at bay. Now her teeth dug into her bottom lip as the process of separation was begun again. At last the name she had given, that of her hairdresser Angelique la Croix, was called. She was to be sent to Nouvelle Orleans.
Relief swept over her. This was the new capital of the Louisiana territory, which extended thousands of miles northward. Surely in this city known as la petite Paris there would be enough educated citizens desirous of learning Italian that she could support herself. Perhaps she could even earn enough to send for Jeanne-Antoinette—if the child was fortunate enough to escape a forced marriage.
Natalie shuddered at the horror. Once more she searched the crowd of immigrants for Hervé. This time she was rewarded by the sight of his blond curls. Without thinking, she started toward him, only to have a squat sergeant, burned as dark as a Moor, grab her by the arm. She slipped from his grasp and thrust her way through the milling women toward the group of chained convicts. Behind her, the sergeant shouted in gutter French liberally streaked with imprecations. Her steps quickened.
She reached the brigand just ahead of the furious soldier and gasped, “Hervé, please, you must protect the child Jeanne-Antoinette! She is bound for a placed called Fort Rosalie.”
His heavy brows wrinkled over the droll eyes that looked down at her with a puzzled expression, and she knew he was trying to recall the girl. Only now, looking at the brigand, did she realize that he had lost quite a bit of weight on the trip. His face was bruised, his upper lip swollen.
Bon Dieu, what had she hoped to accomplish when he was in chains, even more of a prisoner than she and Jeanne-Antoinette? She wasn’t thinking logically anymore. She put her hand to her head, but her hand was jerked away and a fist cuffed her temple just hard enough to make her ears ring.
“Slut!” the sergeant said. “Disobey again, and you’ll find yourself strapped to the whipping horse in New Orleans.”
She had never been spoken to like that. Without thinking, she raised her hand to slap the insolent man, but in a flash Hervé stepped between the soldier and her. The brigand’s chains clanked as his right arm drew back, his hand clenched in a fist meant for the soldier. The chains permitted no further movement.
“Not so fast, my big, tethered animal,” the swarthy sergeant sneered, “because we won’t wait for New Orleans. You can face the cat-o’-nine-tails here and now.”
Natalie spun away to return to the women so that Hervé wouldn’t know she had witnessed the look of futility and hopelessness and utter degradation that passed over his face.
With her portable trunk, the cassette that contained two dresses, two petticoats, six headdresses, and a few sundries, she set out with the other émigrées apportioned to this new Paris, New Orleans. The journey was something that she would remember as long as she lived.
The soldiers and their retinue of twenty-three brides threaded their way across terrain as soft as pudding. It was difficult to tell where the land and water met. The very air seemed soaked with water.
Natalie, who for once had looked forward to dusk and cessation of sunlight, found that the mosquitoes made even the act of breathing difficult. They clung like a black veil before her exposed face. She slapped vainly at the bloodsuck
ing pests and continuously cast apprehensive glances into the impenetrable reeds around her for the legendary sixteen-foot alligators and the snakes that were said to hang from the trees like vines. The rain-drenched forests were alive with thousands of sandpipers, parakeets, and other marsh birds of brilliant hues that protested indignantly at the disturbance made by the passage of the humans.
She knew she was going to hate the muddy wilderness, the enervating, humid, subtropical climate, and the boggy forests that hid the precious sunlight.
That first night the soldiers had to build a platform to sleep on, for water covered the low, marshy land on which they were camped. The swarthy sergeant kept a lusty eye on her during a frugal dinner of salted beef and hard, dark bread, alleviated only a bit by wine. A thundering chorus of frogs kept her awake until late into the night. Sleeping fitfully, she worried about Jeanne-Antoinette. Such a child, but what could she do to help her? What could she do to help herself? She seemed as much a prisoner here as she had been at La Salpêtriére.
By the following day, the sojourners reached a bayou, a corruption of the Choctaw bayuk. St. John Bayou was a four-mile-long, narrow ribbon of sluggish water that interlaced the surrounding steaming delta and served as a backdoor to New Orleans. From the bayou, they followed an ancient Indian trail known as Portage of the Lost until they were within sight of the province of Louisiana’s new capital.
The last vestige of hope died in her breast when she laid eyes on the sodden hamlet of New Orleans. Hacked out of the cypress jungle, it fronted the crescent-shaped bend of an immensely wide river named Michi Sepe by the local Indians.
New Orleans was situated in the midst of a flat and swampy ground thickly wooded and covered with canebrake. Its perimeter was palisaded and moated, with forts at each corner. The rough little village consisted of a few hundred wretched bark and cypress-slabbed huts with palmetto roofs. The streets, laid out in a grid, were bordered by alleged ditches that drained to a moat and elevated banquettes, causing the city blocks to be given the French term of islets, which they literally were.
BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis Page 10
