Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (112 page)

Her breath was jarred from her in a soundless grunt as she struck the packed dirt. Pain radiated through her shoulder and hip and also in her knees where he landed on them. She wrenched herself over, trying to get away from him. Gasping curses, he grappled with her, then whipped the bearskin from his head. It landed in the fire. Breathing the acrid smell of burning fur, Cyrene wrestled with the man she had once thought of as her father. He raised his knife arm. She caught his wrist with her left hand. His teeth were bared in a grimace. Sweat beaded on his forehead, clinging to his brows. Her arm began to tremble with the effort to keep the knife from her.

Little Foot was outside somewhere beyond the hut. The Indian woman would come to her aid if she knew it was needed. Or would she? In any case, Cyrene had no breath, no time to call out.

She struggled back and forth, trying with desperation clouding her mind to roll Nolté from her, pushing with her feet for purchase. He could not be dislodged. Her foot touched the flaming bearskin. She hooked the toe of her moccasin under it and kicked, rolling once more and dragging it over them.

She felt the heat through her skirts, saw the flare as the material began to catch fire. Nolté’s legs were bare to the knee. He gave a hoarse yell, jerking away from her as he kicked at the bearskin. Cyrene shoved him and scrambled away as he tumbled backward. She pushed to her feet, swaying, beating out the blue flames that licked at her skirt without taking her eyes from Nolté.

Nolté tried to get up, then collapsed on the dirt floor. He let his knife fall to the floor as he clutched his leg, gasping, “Cyrene… help. Help me.”

She straightened a little, watching him carefully. Her grasp on her knife tightened. The bearskin lay in a smoldering heap beside him.

“There’s a coal stuck to my leg.” He was jerking in spasms. “Get it off, get it off!”

She moved a step closer.

“Hurry… please.”

She didn’t trust him, but that distrust was new and he had been a part of her life for long years. She held her knife ready but stepped closer, dropping to one knee at his side.

His eyes narrowed. He let go of his leg, at the same time reaching like a striking snake for his knife. Beyond them the door of the hut opened, and in the light Cyrene saw the sheen run along his blade’s edge as he turned it upward, ready to rend and eviscerate when he stabbed.

It was a trick. She was ready. She began her thrust, aiming for the heart with her shoulder muscles knotted and every ounce of her strength behind it.

“No!”

The agonized shout came from the doorway. There was a fluttering sound like the wings of pigeons, followed by a dull thud. Nolté fell back with a strangled cry, his arms outflung. A knife hilt quivered in his chest just under the breastbone.

Cyrene’s blade met only air. She recovered, turning to stare.

It was the elder of the Bretons who crouched half in, half out of the low door. Behind him was René, and also Jean and Gaston.

“Pierre,” she whispered, then added the word that rose unbidden in her mind. “Papa.”

His face twisted. He moved forward into the hut a step, then another. He stopped. Cyrene rose to her feet. She moved toward him, then came to a halt, uncertain. She searched the face of the man who had fathered her and saw the slow rise of tears in his fine blue eyes.

“Papa,” she said again.

He opened his arms. She ran to be caught in them, held close in their gentle solace, their tempered and solid belonging.

It was a week later, after Touchet had been sentenced to the galleys, when René came to propose.

He was most formally attired in wig and
justaucorps
of blue velvet. His silver shoe buckles gleamed and the tricorne tucked under his arm was trimmed with a white plume. He looked as out of place in the flatboat cabin as a diamond in a dung heap. Not that Cyrene considered the cabin a dung heap by any means, but his splendor seemed excessive, a pointed reminder of the inescapable differences between them.

She was cooking the evening meal, making biscuits to go with the squirrel stew that simmered over the fire. Pierre was out on the front deck, whittling wooden spoons. Jean and Gaston had gone to set out hooks for catfish to add to their provisions since it had been agreed that their days of smuggling were over, at least for some time.

Cyrene was standing at the worktable with flour to her wrists and biscuit dough in her hands as René came through the door. She stared at him until her eyes began to burn, then she lowered her head and went on with what she was doing, placing the raw biscuit she held in a greased Dutch oven, squeezing off another one from her bowl of dough.

“How are you, Cyrene?” he asked. She was thinner, her face more angular. He had done that to her, and the knowledge was an ache inside him.

“Well enough. Would you care for something to drink?”

“No, thank you.”

Something in his voice made her hurry into speech. “I’m glad you came. I’ve been thinking of sending a note to tell you how grateful I am — we all are for the pardons.”

“It was little enough. I trust there have been no repercussions among your father’s friends?”

“No. I believe they consider that if the Bretons received their freedom for favors given, it was not Pierre who paid.”

Her voice was carefully neutral, which was more telling, René thought, than the most bitter resentment. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged without looking at him.

“I’ve discovered that Pierre, wily old fox that he is, didn’t tell me much that I couldn’t have discovered for myself given time, except, of course, for where Nolté was hiding.”

A smile flickered over her mouth. “I’m not surprised.”

“No.”

It made her uneasy, his standing there before her so formally. “There’s a stool there by the fire if you care to sit down.”

“Not while you stand.”

“I don’t mind, really.”

He gave her a smile. “I do.”

She finished the biscuits and cleaned her hands by rubbing them together until the dough rolled up and fell off, then rinsing them in a pan of water. Then she spooned a little melted lard over the tops of the biscuits to help them brown evenly, put the lid on the Dutch oven, and carried it to the fireplace. Raking aside the coals, she set the heavy oven on a bed of hot ash and ladled coals on top of it. She checked her stew, stirring the rich brown gravy with its aroma of onions, garlic, and peppers. It was doing well, the meat becoming nicely tender. She returned to the table, where she began to clear away the things she had been using.

“Could you leave that a moment?” René said. “I would like to talk to you.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing.” She reached for a damp cloth and began to wipe up the dusting of spilled flour. She refused to look at René for fear of what she might see. What could he want? He sounded so serious and yet personal. If he had the effrontery to ask her to become his mistress again, she would not be responsible for what she did.

He drew a deep breath. “Very well. You know, don’t you, that there was never any danger, to any of you, when you were brought before the council, that I could never, would never, harm you and yours?”

“I may know it now. I didn’t then, none of us did.”

“I am more sorry than I can say for having to put you through that, but I had a job to do. It was important to know what the Vaudreuils would do and say when confronted with Touchet’s guilt.”

“And now you are satisfied?”

“Reasonably so. There are undoubtedly abuses in this administration, but not to the point of treason, and there’s nothing to say that a replacement would be any better. With Touchet behind a galley oar, there should be considerably fewer such abuses in the future.”

“Then I suppose your gambit was successful.”

“Not if I lose you by it.”

“You cannot lose me,” she said evenly as her brown eyes clashed with his. “In the sense that you mean, I was never yours.”

“That may be so; I won’t quibble over it. I am only trying to say that I want you with me always. I want you to become my wife.”

“That is the most insulting — your what?”

He had roused her from her damnable calm, at any rate. It made him feel better for her to show at least a little disturbance since his own heart was pounding in his chest. “I want you to become my wife. I have spoken to your father. He knows that I’m a second son with few prospects for some time beyond the income to a piece of land given me by my father, but I believe that the king will grant me a concession here in Louisiane in return for my services to him. I would like for you to share it with me, to help build something worth having here in the New World. It’s what you spoke of once, to have a piece of land. Your father and the others would always be welcome there. If you will agree, I will spend my life making recompense—”

“No.”

“I know that you have no reason to trust me as a husband. It was the king’s idea to give me a reputation as a womanizer, a ruse to make my supposed disgrace greater and my appeal to the governor’s wife more certain. It also amused him, I think, to turn me into a libertine for the good of France when so many had accused him of the same to her ill. But I swear to you it isn’t in my nature; I pledge that I will be faithful to you.”

She threw down the cloth she was holding and turned away from him. “Your pledges, like your repute, are of no interest to me. I don’t want recompense from you.”

“I know you have a right to be bitter, but I never meant to hurt you. I just want to take care of you. I want—”

“Please!” she said, her voice raw and her hands, hidden among her skirts, clenched into fists. “I can take care of myself. You owe me nothing. Whatever is done, is done. You did what you came here to do; your brother is avenged and your duty is completed. The best thing now would be for you to go back to France and forget about it.”

“Is that what you intend to do? Forget?”

She turned to look at him, her eyes dark but unflinching. “As soon as I can.”

He wanted to take her in his arms and shake her, or kiss her until she was weak and breathless, from lack of air if nothing else. The proud tilt of her head prevented it, that and his own guilt. He had done enough to injure the bright self-respect that was so much a part of her. Even if he could force her to capitulate, he would not do so. At least he would not use physical coercion unless it was absolutely imperative.

“Then,” he said, inclining his head in a bow, “I will leave you to it.”

Cyrene did not watch him walk away. She could not, for the blur of tears in her eyes.

The Bretons and Cyrene were at the dinner table when the message came from the governor. The marquis requested the opportunity to speak to Mademoiselle Cyrene on a matter of importance. Would she do him the honor of a visit as soon as possible, preferably within the hour?

It was the equivalent of a command. She was not sure the governor would not send an armed escort for her if she did not arrive in a reasonable time. There was no question of not going, of course. She had been the instrument of considerable embarrassment for the marquis and his wife, and if she could make up for it in some way, she would, if only by swift compliance with his request.

The Marquis de Vaudreuil was in his study when Cyrene arrived. His wife was entertaining friends in the salon but came out to greet Cyrene with the utmost cordiality before showing her to the room the governor used for his paperwork.

“My husband wishes to speak to you alone, mademoiselle. I trust you will consider carefully what he asks.” There was speculation in the face of the governor’s wife.

“Willingly, but may I know what it will be?”

“He will tell you himself, but believe me when I say he does not take the matter lightly.”

“Yes,” Cyrene said, more mystified than ever and not completely trustful of the smile the other woman gave her. There was no time for more, however. Madame Vaudreuil had reached the study door and turned the knob. She put her head into the room, announced Cyrene, and, with a quick, conspiratorial wink, went away back toward the salon.

Cyrene pushed open the door and stepped into the study. The marquis put down a paper he was studying and came forward to bow over her hand. A pair of
fauteuil
chairs sat before a small fire, and he led her to one before spreading the skirt of his coat and dropping gracefully into the other. He took out a snuffbox, took a pinch, then snapped it shut and had recourse to his handkerchief. He put the snuffbox away in his waistcoat pocket.