Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (111 page)

Little Foot met Cyrene at the door of her hut. The Indian woman’s face was impassive as she watched Cyrene approach. She might have been expected to show surprise, even joy, at seeing her free. Instead, there was nothing except stoic acceptance.

They exchanged greetings. Cyrene forestalled an offer of hospitality by saying first, “Where is Quick Squirrel, your daughter?”

“Ah,” Little Foot said, a quick exclamation that expressed anger and pain and disgust, “I knew it would come to this.”

“Yes. Why did you agree?”

“It was the father of my son who asked.”

Little Foot led Cyrene to her daughter’s hut, called out for permission to enter, then left Cyrene there. Quick Squirrel came to the door and stood looking at Cyrene for long moments before she stepped back to permit her to move inside.

It was dim and smoky inside the hut, but it smelled of fresh-cut wood from its recent building. The furnishings were meager: a sleeping bench, a few pots and baskets, a bunch or two of dried herbs hanging from the roof poles. Food bubbled in a pot hanging over the center fire. On the sleeping bench lay Louis Nolté.

He was unshaven and pale, and there was a wild look in his red-rimmed eyes as he stared behind her as if he expected to see a troop of soldiers at her back. He sat bolt upright, clutching a bearskin coverlet to his chest.

“How did you find me?” he demanded, his voice no more than a croak.

“All I had to do was think of the kind of man you are.”

He hardly blinked. “Who have you told? Who else is coming?”

“No one. They think you are dead.”

“Good, good. You always were a good girl.”

There was an ingratiating whine with an undertone of cunning in his voice that set Cyrene’s teeth on edge. “Pierre is in trouble over you; he has been arrested. You must come and help him.”

“Madness! What makes you think I could?”

“Because it’s Lemonnier who is behind it, as I think you know.”

He cursed in virulent phrases. “I thought you were keeping him occupied.”

“Not enough so, apparently.”

“I am the one who needs help, Cyrene,
ma chère.
The man is seeking to destroy me. He — he is a fiend, hounding me here, following me all this way from Paris. He wants to see me dead.”

“And what of you, haven’t you tried to kill him, too?”

The man on the bench sent a sharp look at Quick Squirrel, who had lifted her head to listen. He jerked his head at her, and the Indian girl rose and left the hut. He turned back to Cyrene.

“I had to stop Lemonnier, didn’t I?”

“Why? You were supposed to have drowned.”

“That was clever, wasn’t it? But he wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t go away. He made me stay here with these savages, hiding like some animal in the woods. I couldn’t see people, had no food worthy of the name, no drink, no amusements. It was intolerable.”

“No doubt it was, for him. Cyrene looked at the man who was supposed to be her father, and revulsion moved over her. He had aged considerably since she had last seen him. His face was shrunken and his hands palsied, and there was about him the unmistakable look of pox-ridden debauchery. She wondered that she had never seen it before.

“You were afraid of René,” she said with what she recognized in herself as conscious cruelty.

“Yes, I was afraid! You don’t know him. He was watching, always watching. He won’t give up.”

“So you stabbed him from behind, then ran away to Pierre and Jean for help in cleaning up the mess you had made.”

“He was a danger to us all. If he had put me and Pierre and the others all in prison, what would have become of you?”

“The others are in prison now,” she said, her voice cold.

He shrugged. “It’s not my affair.”

“You brought René Lemonnier down on them by destroying his brother.”

He shifted his eyes away from her clear gaze. “He told you that? They were both too proud. His brother shouldn’t have gambled if he couldn’t afford to lose, shouldn’t have been so trusting. Gullible idiots, all of them, not smart enough for me.”

“Not smart enough to recognize counterfeit when they saw it?”

“Except this René. When I heard he was in New Orleans, I knew why he had come. The notes. Should never have used the same ones. But I had a trunk half full, hidden away; a man can never tell what might be needed. Your mother didn’t know. She wouldn’t have come with me if she had known. She was like that.”

“René traced you to Louisiane by the notes you passed in town.”

“After three years, he tracked me down. He won’t give up.”

Louis Nolté rambled on, repeating himself, damning himself. It had been Jean who had arranged for Louis to stay with Little Foot. He had been with her and her daughter on their journey to the gulf to meet with Pierre and Jean; that had been the reason why the Indian woman would not let Cyrene into her hut. Little Foot had been too knowing, too sharp of tongue for his liking. He had seduced her daughter Quick Squirrel with trinkets and fine words. That had amused him for a time, especially since it enraged Little Foot. But it had soon begun to pall. He had been elated when Cyrene became René’s mistress. He had thought Lemonnier would be satisfied with that revenge and go away at last. But no, he had settled deeper into the society of the town and he still sent out his spies.

“So you hired thugs and attacked him again,” Cyrene said, “as you hired the assassin to creep up on him while he lay injured on the flatboat.”

“You ruined it for me. Why did you do that? I just wanted to get you out of the way so mat the others could kill him.”

Had he? She touched her fingers briefly to the bruise that still lay under her cheekbone. It was impossible to be sure, impossible to know what he might have done to her if she had obstructed his purpose. In any case, it no longer mattered.

“Listen to me. Pierre and Jean and Gaston are being held in prison, but it’s really you that René wants. He has the authority to pardon them and it’s possible he might do that if you will give yourself up to him.”

“Give myself up!” He stared as if he thought her mad.

“You owe this to Pierre, to them all.”

“I owe them nothing!”

“You wronged Pierre in New France all those years ago; you sent him to the galleys, took his furs, took his wife. Now René is after us all for what you did to his brother and Pierre is once more taking the blame for your crimes in order to protect me. If you are any kind of a man, you will do what is right.”

“Do you take me for a simpleton? What do I care what happens to Pierre?”

“They know he escaped from the galleys. He’ll hang! You will at least be returned to France for your trial for counterfeiting.”

“Yes, and then be hanged or sent to the Bastille, which is a death sentence itself.”

“You would let Pierre die in your place?”

“But of course!”

“I won’t, not after all he has done. If you aren’t willing to give yourself up, then I will have to tell René where he can find you.”

“My own daughter?” he cried, his gaze wide, staring.

She stood looking into his watery eyes, and something she had begun to suspect as she listened to René’s summation before the council became a certainty. “But that’s just it,” she said slowly, “I am not your daughter.”

“What nonsense is this? Of course you are!”

“Legally, perhaps. But I have always known you were married to my mother a bare month before I was born. I thought it was a forced trip to the altar as with so many others, that I was the reason you and my mother weren’t happy. But it wasn’t that, was it? How long was it before she began to suspect what you had done?”

A smile twisted his face. “Not long, but she wasn’t a fighter like you. She blamed herself, thought she must have done something to make me love her enough to try to kill Pierre.”

“It was really my grandfather’s money and the furs.”

“How little you know of men, or love, if you think so — though they counted, oh, yes, they counted. But your mother is dead. And if Lemonnier doesn’t go back to Paris soon, so will he be dead. Your grandfather, stingy old bastard that he is, can’t live forever. I wonder what would happen then to his estate if you were to die in the wilderness, a victim of the savages and the recent unrest among the Choctaw? And if I was to wander into New Orleans from downriver, miraculously alive?”

He was not sane, perhaps the effects of the pox but probably a tendency of long-standing. It was so quiet Cyrene could hear the wind sighing through the branches of the trees outside, the murmur of voices from the next hut and the distant barking of dogs.

He was becoming restive. She must speak. “You would be the heir, I suppose, since everyone considers you my next of kin, but I am not going to die.”

“Aren’t you,
chère?
Aren’t you? You are so headstrong and so foolhardy for venturing out here alone, and life is so uncertain.”

She watched him bring the long knife out from under the bearskin, saw the blade of polished steel gleam in the dim light of the hut, and she felt no fear, no anger, no surprise, nothing except cold, exacting contempt. She reached for the knife in the sheath that hung from her waist, hidden among her skirts. The hilt was solid, giving the weapon a comforting weight in her hand as she brought it out and turned the winking tip toward Louis Nolté.

“You were right,” she said, “I am a fighter.”

He laughed as he came up off the bed wearing only a pair of breeches. “Maybe, but no match for a man.”

“You think not?” She eased away from him to give herself room, her quick glance looking for obstacles that would have to be avoided, measuring the distance to the door as Gaston and Pierre had taught her in the lessons they had thought sufficient to discourage importunate suitors.

“I am taller, heavier, and have longer arms.”

“You tried once to kill Pierre and three times to kill René, and they still live. I expect I will, too.”

He lunged for her, his knife a silver arc cutting toward her belly. She leaped aside and felt the waft of air sliced by the blade. A fierce and fearful joy surged in her veins. He had none of Gaston’s strength and agility and little of his watchful cunning.

“You’re getting old,” she taunted, “old and sick.”

“I should have put you out of my way years ago.” He feinted, then slashed at her in a backhand swing.

She whirled, putting the fire between them, giving him a mocking look across it. As he started around it toward her, she thrust her toe in its rough leather moccasin into the piled ashes and kicked upward, flinging bits of hot coals and roiling smoke into his face. He yelled, throwing up his free hand. She followed her advantage, thrusting toward his knife arm. He wrenched backward, but her knife tip sliced through flesh, leaving a welling red streak behind.

“You little bitch,” he gasped, and plunged toward her, his eyes wild.

She could have finished him then. It was just a matter of stepping to one side, ducking under his blade, and letting him impale himself on her own. But she had been right; he was crazed and ill. Whatever he might have done in the past, whatever he might intend to do, she was not his executioner.

She sidestepped, diving away from him toward the sleeping bench and the bearskin that lay half on it, half on the floor. She scooped it up in her left hand, whirling it over her arm. This was the moment of her greatest danger, she realized, when she had lost her willingness to kill, when all she wanted was to disarm the man before her and take him back to explain to the governor and the council who he was and what he had done.

Louis Nolté had thought to overpower her with strength and speed. He could not do it. The pain she had inflicted was so humiliating and her elusiveness such a frustration that he dropped his cocky assurance to concentrate on showing her she could be bested. He became crafty, and so more deadly.

Cyrene retreated before him, her movements smooth, her gaze intent. Twice she fended off his flashing blade with the bearskin. Twice she avoided the traps he set: the corner of the hut, the support arm for the pot over the fire. The weight of the coverlet was tiring, making her shoulder ache. An end slipped, drooping ‘ the packed earth floor. Her foot come down on it. She stumbled.

Nolté leaped at her. In a flash, she swung the bearskin so that it flared out like a thick net, enveloping his head and arms in its folds. Bending swiftly, she shot out her left leg and hooked her foot around his ankle. He plunged forward. She twisted aside, trying to evade his fall. His flailing arm caught her. She staggered headlong and was carried to the hard earth floor with him.