Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (44 page)

On the fifth day after the troops from New Orleans had landed, they came into sight. Whether from spite or merely strategy, they set up their position on the site of the Grand Village. They swarmed over the place, stabling their horses in the huts, pulling down walls, and cutting down the ancient shade trees for firewood. The Chevalier de Loubois made his quarters in the temple and placed his largest cannon on the lower slope of this sacred mound. A flagpole was raised on which snapped and fluttered the fleur-de-lis of France. Drums rolled. Bugles blew. Night fell.

Where the news came from, none could say. It might have originated with the French themselves, might have been told to the Choctaws, who could have passed it to some of the Natchez from the outlying villages as they made their way into the forts. It spread swiftly in the crowded streets where several families now occupied every newly built hut. It was Madame Doucet who recounted it to Elise, laughing in wild, high-pitched glee that was painful to hear. It appeared that the party of Natchez hunters who had been sent to New Orleans by the Tunicas were dead, executed by the French. Governor Perier himself had given the order and it had been carried out. The four men and two women of the Natchez had been burned at the stake.

There were few who slept that night. Men prowled the ramparts, the curious as well as those on guard. Most of them carried muskets, arms bought with furs from traders or looted from Fort Rosalie. Powder and ball had been issued earlier in the day from a store kept in a hut built near the well in case of fire. Some of those less edgy sat carefully painting their faces and bodies with stripes of red, yellow, and white.

The number of warriors within the wall was difficult to tell, but it was above four hundred, perhaps nearer to five. The remaining two to three hundred fighting men were in the other fort across the creek where the people from the smaller, outlying villages were concentrated. Elise had heard that Path Bear was commanding the warriors of this second fort in his capacity as chief of the second largest village and therefore third most important man behind the Great Sun and Reynaud. The total number of armed men in both forts far outnumbered the French gathered outside. But the French had at their backs the Choctaws, so their combined strength was more than twice as great.

In the main fort, the small plaza left open in front of the house of the Great Sun, was a seething mass of confusion as people sought to find shelter for themselves, their dogs, chickens, pigs, and other belongings. Women called back and forth, children screamed, animals barked and cackled and squealed. Dust rose thickly in the air, mixing with the smoke and cooking fires to hang in a pall that was held in by the upright logs of the wall.

A plan for the accommodation of everyone had been drawn up, but persuading several hundred tired and frightened women and children to follow it was not easy. Class lines had to be followed, this was paramount. There was little outright squabbling, but a great deal of stubborn insistence on privilege and precedence. Reynaud was everywhere, ordering loose animals penned, settling disputes over who was to live with whom, picking up a crying child and carrying him around on his shoulder. St. Cosme served as his aide, carrying orders and suggestions back and forth between Reynaud and the Great Sun.

Elise directed people here and there and helped with bundles. When she had a spare moment, she spoke to the Frenchwomen, answering their questions about what was happening as best she could. Their greatest fear was that if the French attacked there would be reprisals against them. Elise was doubtful of it happening. To the Natchez mind, the captives had become a part of the tribe, especially after the passage of so many months. It was impossible to say what might be done in the heat of anger, of course or if the fight went against the Indians.

To our side of the small plaza, an array of food and drink had been set out, and it was here that the Great Sun presided from his throne chair, which had been brought down from his house for that purpose. He issued decrees and sent runners here and there, acting with surprising dispatch to bring order out of the chaos. It was noticeable, however, that none of the refugees were directed to his own abode on its small mound.

As the night wore on, the din subsided. The last wooden bowl was emptied and the scraps thrown out to be scrabbled over by flapping chickens and charging pigs. The Great Sun ascended to his house. The winding alleyways between the houses were cleared. The only sounds heard from the huts were the rasp of a snore from an elder or the fretful cry of a child. The night wind blew, whining over the enclosing palisade. Now and then a dog growled, jealous of his new territory, then lapsed into silence. The forms of sleeping men rolled in their capes were everywhere, particularly against the foundation of the wall and near the entrance to the stockade. Elise, standing in the doorway of the hut she shared with Helene and her child, watched as the high-riding, three-quarter moon went behind a cloud, leaving the village in darkness. She shivered.

Reynaud, moving to stand behind her, drew her against him. He bent to nuzzle the turn of her neck, the sensitive place behind her ear. His breath was warm against her cheek as he spoke. “It will be morning soon and there is nothing to be done except wait. Come to the bed furs.”

He made love to her with tenderness and power, giving of his strength, accepting hers. It was as if he sought forgetfulness in her, a refuge from his terrible responsibility, if only for a brief hour. They clung together in the darkness, their bodies entwined, their eyes tightly closed; afraid but unrelentingly valiant.

He was gone when Elise stirred and sat up, wide awake, as dawn brought gray light into the hut. The morning was quiet, filled with a waiting stillness unbroken even by the calls of birds. At the far end of the room, Helene turned over with a rustle of furs. Seeing Elise sitting upright, listening, she pushed up on one elbow.

“What is it?” the other woman said.

“I don’t—”

Elise’s words were lost in the booming of muskets and the hoarse shouts of charging men. The noise, rising from the defenders inside as well as the troops outside the enclosing wall, was deafening. It was an attack. The first round in the siege had begun.

Elise threw back the bearskin that covered her and jumped up, snatching her skirt and jerking it around her. The baby was crying, startled by the racket, and Helene was trying to quiet her. Sending them no more than a quick glance, wrapping her cape around her as she went, Elise ran to the door and pushed it aside to look out.

Already there was a heavy cloud of acrid blue-gray powder smoke swirling within the stockade. Through it could be seen the men on the wall, firing down at the advancing French, moving back and forth in squads as first one position and then another was pressed hard. The injured were being let down to the ground where they lay in the way. Women ran here and there, shouting to be heard. Children cried. A pair of horses had broken their tethers and they galloped back and forth across the village circle with keening pigs running from under their flying hooves and dogs barking at their heels.

Elise ran to a section of the palisade that was not under attack. She climbed the ladder that led to the walkway, running along it until she could see and yet not be in the way.

Beyond the wall, the orderly ranks of the French came on, firing, dropping to one knee to reload as the next row fired above them, closing together where the injured fell behind. Here and there were details with scaling ladders, but few were able to get them in place and those that did were repelled with ferocity. To the rear of the French lines could be seen the Choctaws drawn up in firing ranks. They did not advance, however, but stayed well back out of range. The result was that their fire was dropping short of the Natchez on the wall and was actually in danger of falling among the French.

But the French forces were taking a toll. Farther around the fort, near the front section where the brunt of the attack was being directed, a warrior yelled and reeled back with blood streaming down his face. Another keeled silently off the walk-way, falling to the ground to lie unmoving.

Elise whirled back toward the ladder, descending to the ground once more. The stickiness of resin from the logs on which she had been standing made her realize that her feet were bare and she ran toward the hut.

On her knees searching for her moccasins under the sleeping bench, she told Helene what was taking place to the best of her understanding. Then slipping on her footwear, fastening her heavy outdoor cape on her shoulder as she ran, she left the hut and stepped into the chaos of the fortified village. The first person she saw was Little Quail. The woman shouted that someone was needed to move the dead and injured out of the way. In no time they had gathered a group of stout females and headed toward the wall.

For the next hour, there were only bodies, the smell of gunpowder, the boom of firing and clatter of balls hitting the thick wall, the smell of blood and sweat, and more bodies. The dead were laid out in the shade of a great oak. A hut was designated as a hospital and the injured were led or carried there. Elise swabbed wounds and bound them with strips of leather, with mulberry cloth and pieces torn from the linen shirts and the silk and satin dresses looted from the French. Few of the injured men could be persuaded to stay away from the wall and those few only if they were too weak to stand. As soon as their injuries were bound so that the pouring blood was no longer troublesome with its slipperiness, they returned to defend the village.

Pausing now and then in her task, Elise watched the fighting on the wall and particularly at the channel-like gate into the fort. With Reynaud leading them, the Natchez warriors repelled the French again and again. Their strength was fiendish, inhuman, as if they drew on reservoirs of power and courage unknown to the French. They were fighting for their lives, to keep from becoming vassals, the slaves, of their enemy, fighting to protect their women and children. Still, there was something more. Was it because they were less civilized, more nearly savage? Was it because they feared death less, having no true belief in an avenging God and the fires of hell despite years of exposure to such religious doctrines? Or was it simply that they clung to life more fiercely in their natural revere for its sweetness?

So little did it seem that the Natchez could ever be driven from their fortified position that Elise, during a lull in the fighting when she brought water to Reynaud, spoke of it to him.

“If you win, you and the Natchez, if the French sue for peace, will you consider giving up the French captives in exchange for being left alone?”

“If that is made a condition, you mean?” he asked, watching as he swirled the water in the wooden bowl she had given him.

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Why do you ask?”

She tipped her head toward the warriors around her. “They fight so well, without tiring or feeling pain, almost as if they weren’t quite human.”

“Don’t be fooled. They tire as any man does and feel the pain they won’t show. The French are the brave men here, marching again and again into our fire.”

“I thought you considered that stupid.”

He shrugged. “A man can be stupid and courageous at the same time. I expect that if I were on the other side, I would find many among the men out there to call heroic.”

She nodded her understanding of his argument, but went on with her own line of thought. “The Choctaws are little help to the French or so it appears to me. If the French should lose, things will change.”

“In what way?”

“The women will remain captives, for one thing. If they have to stay here, I don’t know how they will take it.”

“They will adjust, if it should happen.”

“Will they? I doubt it, not when their people are so close. Nor will the French forget them, not so many.”

He nodded. “No doubt you’re right. It would be best to let them go. But whether the council will agree to it, I don’t know.”

“And what of us? What will we do?”

He looked at her swiftly. “Us?”

“I assumed … That is, we are married. Would we stay here?” The heat of a flush rose to her cheeks, but she would not look away from his dark gaze. Let him think what he pleased.

“You said ‘them’ when you spoke of the French; you don’t consider yourself a Frenchwoman now? You would not want to go with the others back to New Orleans?”

“I’m not sure what I am. I … suppose I will go with them if it is necessary.”

“It will not be,” he said, returning the bowl to her fingers and closing his own around hers as she took it. “When it is finished here, I will go back to my house on the Bayou Duc de Maine. You may come with me if you choose.”

How far away it seemed now, that house, and Madeleine. Like a dream. Would she ever see it again? Would she feel its serenity around her or walk through its rooms on a warm summer day when everything was quiet and clean and without danger? Would she have children who would play there and grow tall and straight and wise, afraid of no man? It was a dream, in truth. No more.

At that moment Pierre shouted from farther down the wall. A new attack was being mounted. “Go,” Reynaud said, spinning her around and giving her a quick push. She turned back to press a hard kiss to Reynaud’s powder-blackened mouth and scrambled down from the ladder to the ground, sloshing water as she went.

She stopped to look in at the hospital but, giving water to several men, speaking to Little Quail who sat with a fan made of turkey tail feathers in her hand, fanning flies away from the face of a dying boy. Returning to the well for more water, Elise heard musket balls whistling through the limbs of the tree that overhung it. One hit the trunk and dropped clattering down through the branches to fall near her feet. She had become so used to such things in the last hours that she hardly noticed.