Irregular Verbs (24 page)

Daniel nodded slowly. “Where is he now, then?”

“Oh—well—he tried to control the plague in the town, as I told you, sir, but in the end it was no use. He moved on up the river to get away from it, with what people were left.”

“And you?” Daniel asked. “Why are you still here?”

A pained look crossed Frederick’s face. “He thought I was sick,” he said. “Anyone in whom the plague hadn’t already come and gone had to stay behind, you see, but I had it as a child—” his fingers went to the scars on his cheek “—so it never came.”

“And everyone else, he just left them here to die?”

“It’s the hygiene, sir, the French hygiene. He taught me. Limit the spread, control the disease. You must know that.”

After a moment Daniel nodded. “Tell me, then,” he asked, “this God of yours, this Jesus—did Coeur-Lion explain to you why he brings plagues like this? Why he lets them kill men and women, young and old?”

Frederick frowned. “Well, sir,” he said, “I suppose it’s that we’re all slaves to God, you know—and it’s a master’s duty to whip his slaves now and again, remind them who’s in charge.”

In the end Daniel decided to take the man onboard—he said he had been to Coeur-Lion’s new camp, and could act as a guide—and the ship began to move slowly upriver once more. He was thankful Frederick’s French was limited; the crew members’ power of reason was limited enough without exposure to religion, superstition and whatever else might be in the man’s head. Already he was disturbed by what Frederick had said about Coeur-Lion: again he was reminded of the governor’s words, and of the second sealed envelope in his desk. What was it about this territory, this river, that so changed people? If it were changing him, would he even notice?

The river began to bend over the next hours, turning from northwest to nearly straight north. Daniel remained in the wheelhouse with Latour the whole time, spyglass at the ready, and he had reluctantly allowed Frederick in as well—better, he thought, to keep him away from the crew. The man began to get excited as they rounded the bend, and after a few moments Daniel saw what he was gesturing at: on the western bank, a few kilometres away, stood a vast artificial hill, stepped like the Mexican pyramids. Its scale was hard to gauge at this distance but it had to be at least two hundred metres long on each side, thirty high. Smaller pyramids, perhaps thirty or forty of them, were scattered around it, half-buried and with their edges weathered smooth, and small square buildings with domed roofs nestled in their shadows.

“That’s it,” Frederick said.

As they crept towards the landing the pilot’s course, intentionally or not, veered nearer to the western shore; near enough that when the arrows began to fly, a few of them reached the ship.

“Hard to starboard!” Daniel called. “Get us to the middle of the channel!”

Swearing under his breath Latour threw himself at the wheel, fighting to shift the ship’s course. Daniel unholstered his pistol and ran out onto the deck, looked around: the arrows, still flying, were falling into the water now, but one had lodged deep in Thibodeaux’s leg. The man was lying on his back on the deck, his face pale, his breath coming in shudders.

“Sweet Jesus,” Frederick said from behind him.

Daniel kneeled down next to Thibodeaux, took the man’s knife from his belt and cut ribbons off his shirt. He tried to tie a tourniquet but the blood still flowed from the wound, sluggish and dark.

“Let me,” Frederick said, elbowing Daniel aside. He took one of the ribbons cut from the man’s shirt and dipped it in the blood; then he held the stained cloth between his hands and prayed, saying, “Blood, I judge you in the name of the Father. I judge you in the faith of Jesus. I judge you in the name of the Holy Spirit.” Then he turned to one of the other men on the deck, said in broken French “Take this and hide it. Somewhere safe, and never let him see it.”

To Daniel’s surprise, the bleeding had slowed; though Thibodeaux was still deathly pale his breath was coming in more even gasps as well. “Is that the French hygiene Coeur-Lion taught you?”

Frederick shook his head. “No, sir. Just faith in Jesus.” He held out his hand, opened it to show the blood on his palm.

“And I suppose Jesus will keep this man from getting sepsis in his wound?” Daniel shook his head, called one of the crew over. “Alcohol, the white bottle,” he said.

The rain of arrows had stopped now, and once the wound had been sterilized and Thibodeaux taken to the Captain’s cabin Daniel returned to the wheelhouse. “Ready the boat,” he said.

“Should I blow for a port?” Latour asked.

Daniel shook his head. “I think they know we’re here.”

The Eugénie moved upriver at a crawl, the pyramid rising up as they neared it. Daniel had never seen the pyramids of Egypt or Mexico, only read descriptions of them, but he doubted if they could be any more magnificent than this: it was by far the tallest thing on the plain, looking as tall as the far hills. “Who could have built these?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Frederick said.

Daniel ordered the boat lowered, with one box of the trade goods loaded into it. This time there was no trouble persuading the crew to remain on board. Daniel went back to his cabin, took both sealed envelopes from his desk, then went back on deck and climbed down into the boat. Frederick was already there, along with Latour and one of the crewmen.

“One of us ought to stay on the ship,” Daniel said.

“There’s not enough food aboard to get back down the river,” Latour said. “They won’t go anywhere.”

“So I should expect the crew to act rationally, in their own self-interest?”

Latour crossed his arms. “We don’t know what’s happened here. You need someone with you.” He threw a glance at Frederick. “Someone you can trust.”

Daniel nodded. “All right,” he said, signalled for the ropes to be untied. Latour and the other crewman took the oars, moving the boat slowly towards the shore. Earlier Daniel had noticed that the pyramid had a row of more closely spaced tiers, like a giant staircase, running down part of its length towards the river; he guided the boat towards its foot.

A crowd was beginning to gather on the shore, a mix of whites, blacks and Indians, with the costumes of all three peoples mixed promiscuously. As the boat struck the bottom the crowd parted, a half-dozen men in Indian garb moving to the fore to greet them. Each of these carried a rifle, and Daniel saw that many others in the crowd were armed with bows, knives or hatchets.

Standing up, Daniel held his hands high to show they were empty. “We come on behalf of Onontio,” he said.

One of the Indians who had come to meet them nodded. “Very good,” he said in flawless French. “We will take you to see him.”

The armed Indians waited until all four were on shore and then surrounded them, leading them towards the pyramid. Two others followed with the chest full of trade goods. The staircase was steep, lined on either side with tall, straight poles: those at the bottom were topped with skulls, as the ones at Sainte-Genevieve had been, but as they rose higher the heads grew progressively more fresh and fuller-fleshed.

The top of the pyramid was freezing, a constant wind from the north chilling the humid air. Two squat buildings stood there, one at the eastern end and the other at the west. A dozen old men, all wearing long white feathered cloaks, stood outside the western building; once Daniel and the others had been led to them they turned towards the building’s door and howled like wolves. A small shape emerged from the doorway as they did so, a stooped, sickly, balding man wrapped in a red cloak. It was only by the nose and eyes that Daniel recognized Coeur-Lion.

“So you’ve come,” Coeur-Lion said, wheezing each time he drew in breath. His face was covered with dry pocks, and he reached up to scratch one with a wooden tool shaped like a shallow cup. Two women followed Coeur-Lion out of the building, one black and one Indian, each one young and broad-hipped.

Daniel opened his mouth, found himself speechless. While he was still struggling to find words Frederick stepped forward, threw himself at Coeur-Lion’s feet. “It’s been eleven days,” he said. “I don’t have the plague, sir, you can see that.”

“You brought them here,” Coeur-Lion said. His mouth was toothless, his voice slurred. “Do you know if they have the plague?”

“But—they’re your people,” Frederick said.

Coeur-Lion shook his head. “These are my people,” he said, gesturing feebly at the white-cloaked men. “No matter. You are forgiven.” He turned to Daniel. “You brought goods, to trade?”

“Yes—there are more on the ship—”

“Give me one of those blankets. It’s too cold up here.”

Daniel opened the chest that they had brought from the ship, pulled out one of the striped wool blankets that were a staple of the Republic’s trade. He handed it carefully to Coeur-Lion who wrapped it around himself, seeming to disappear within it.

“That’s better,” Coeur-Lion said. He made a small gesture at the armed men who had brought Daniel and the others, and they started back down the pyramid. “Come with me,” he said to Daniel, turning back towards the dark doorway.

Throwing a glance back at Latour and the other crewman Daniel followed, into the low building. It was a single room inside, an apartment with a couch, stools, rope bed and an open, foul-smelling privy. A torch guttered in a sconce on the wall, below it a table scattered with paper and birch bark. Coeur-Lion gestured to Daniel to sit on the couch, then lay himself down on the bed; he nodded to one of the young women who opened her top, presented a nipple for him to suckle at. As Coeur-Lion drew milk, wheezing and sucking and smacking his lips, Daniel found himself paralyzed, his mind unwilling to process what was before him. Finally, when the woman had silently covered herself and withdrawn from the building, he was able to draw out the first of the sealed orders.

“I was given this to give to you, M’sieu,” he said, “and to see that you read it.”

Coeur-Lion nodded, reached out a hand; Daniel had to stand to deliver the envelope to his grasp. “And your orders?” he asked.

“M’sieu?”

“There are always two sets of orders,” Coeur-Lion said. The envelope Daniel had given him lay in his lap, its seal unbroken. “Have you read yours? You look like an honest man, so I would guess not. But I imagine you’ve guessed what they are.”

Daniel said nothing.

Coeur-Lion picked up his envelope, broke the seal with a sharp fingernail. He squinted in the flickering light, reading the orders with rheumy eyes, then finally nodded. “As I expected,” he said. “And now you.”

“M’sieu Coeur-Lion . . .”

“No matter,” Coeur-Lion said, giving a small wave of the hand. “I am dying, anyway, and your orders are as false as mine.” He reached up to scratch at his pocks once more with the wooden tool, careful to catch the flaking skin in its bowl. “When LaSalle came here, you know, in the days of the Ancien Regime, he found the whole valley depopulated: the Spanish had been through a century before, and the Indians were only then starting to recover from the diseases they brought. It was the weapon that won the Spaniards Mexico, of course, though they didn’t know it.” He took a deep, laboured breath, drew the blanket more tightly around himself. “That is the great difference between them and us.”

“They are saying disease will be a thing of the past, thanks to M’sieu Pasteur.”

“And do you believe this?” Coeur-Lion asked.

Daniel shrugged.

“The French hygiene,” Coeur-Lion said. “We used to say that the English killed their Indians and the Spaniards enslaved theirs, but we taught ours to reason. Wherever we tread, the world becomes more rational. How can it be otherwise?”

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “I don’t understand—all this—”

“I was here—in Sainte-Genevieve, I mean—only a year before they began to get sick,” Coeur-Lion said. His voice was fading, his gestures growing most spastic. “A ship had come like yours, bearing cargo from Nouvelle-Orleans. Beads and blankets. . . . At first I didn’t understand what was happening, and when I did it was too late. I make strong medicine, I said, convinced them to quarantine their sick, but in the end that failed too.” He coughed. “It was Frederick who gave me the idea of taking on their sickness. The Turkish method of variolation, they take the dry pustules up through their noses and become immune. I had the pox as a child of course, had to starve myself until I was weak enough to catch it a second time . . .” He scratched at his forearm again, this time letting the dry flakes of skin shower to the floor. “M’sieu Pasteur would say my methods are unsound. Do you think my methods are unsound?”

When Daniel did not respond Coeur-Lion fell silent, and Daniel sat and watched his chest rise and fall until it was clear the man was asleep. Daniel got up, took the envelope from Coeur-Lion’s hand, drew out his orders and read them. Then he held the paper in the torch’s flame until they were burned. As he did he looked down at the table below, glanced at the scraps of paper and birch bark. He was only able to make out one fragment: it read
Nous sommes tous sauvages
.

There was no need for his orders now: Coeur-Lion would be dead within days. When both envelopes had burned Daniel returned to his chair to wait for the sunrise.

Some time after that he heard a muffled shot, jolting him to wakefulness. The torch had gone out while he dozed: it was only by his tread that Daniel recognized Latour as he came into the building.

“Is he dead?” Latour asked.

“Yes,” Daniel said.

Daniel could just see Latour nodding in the dim light. He followed Latour out onto the broad roof of the pyramid, past the fallen bodies of the two guards outside. Then Latour reached into his coat, drew out a white envelope and let the fierce winds snatch it from his hand. It was gone before Daniel could see if the seal had been broken, vanished into the darkness.

They made their way down the staircase on their hands and knees, gripping the steep steps to keep from falling. Finally they reached the ground and covered the short distance to the boat. Neither one mentioned the other crewman.

“We don’t have enough supplies to get back to Nouvelle-Orleans,” Latour said as they climbed back onboard the Eugénie.