Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (47 page)

“Elise,” he breathed, “you have seen her?”

“Just this morning.”

“And? And?” he asked in impatience as he leaned over her.

Elise relented with a smile. “She is very well, indeed. You have a beautiful daughter who keeps the village awake with her demands.”

He closed his eyes and there was a rim of moisture clinging to the base of his lashes.

“I have a message for you also,” Elise went on. “She saw you, you know. She sends her love and her prayers that you will take care.”

“Ah, Elise, I could kiss you!”

“You had best not. Your Helene may be watching or Reynaud.”

“Ah, yes, Chavalier. I’m sorry if Loubois was unpleasant about him. I tried to tell everyone that you were abducted, separated from us against your will. It was Pascal who in his cups suggested otherwise. Henri has threatened to challenge him to a duel.”

“You must not let him!”

“Oh, Pascal would not meet him. He laughs at the boy’s insults, saying he was too smitten with calf love for you to believe a word against you.”

“Perhaps they will not come together often enough for there to be trouble.”

“The community around the fort in the Natchitoches country is a small one, but St. Denis is looking after the boy.”

“There are still there?”

“Assuredly. The place is more of a wilderness than Natchez, with better opportunities for smuggling with the Spanish at Los Adaes; why should Pascal not wish to remain? As for Henri, as I said, Commandant St. Denis has taken him in charge, given him work.”

They spoke of other things, of the baby and how it was born, of how Helene was living and the conditions of the siege, though Elise was hardly more forthcoming about the latter than she had been with the chevalier.

Toward the end of the hour, she sent St. Amant a quick glance.

“What do you think of Loubois? If he gives his word, will he honor it?”

“You mean, will he roll up his tent and match away to his waiting ship when he has the captives safe? He must, if he gives his word.”

“You think so? There are many who feel that a man’s word given to a savage is no word at all, especially if given under duress.”

St. Amant lifted a brow. “You have grown cynical.”

“Cautious, perhaps, but then I have always been that. But Loubois strikes me as an ambitious man. Would it not be a feather in his cap if he were to secure the women and children, then turn and annihilate the Natchez when they have lowered their guard?”

“He could prove the extent of the Indian problem, thereby giving Perier justification for his alarm, and at the same time save the company the expense of sending out men and arms to put down the uprising.” With a thoughtful frown on his face, St. Amant nodded. “It is possible.”

“Probable?”

“I would not like to think so,” he answered, his tone grave.

Behind them, the chevalier approached. He moved to bow to Elise. “My apologies for keeping you waiting, madame. It was most important that my decision not be made in haste since so much is at stake.”

“I understand,” she murmured, risking a glance at St. Amant. The smoothness of the king’s lieutenant’s tone appeared to strike him as odd also, for he was frowning.

“I agree to the terms you have presented. We will withdraw a short distance so that the women and children can be released. Then in return for the release of the captives taken during the massacre at Fort Rosalie, the Natchez may live unmolested.”

“You will smoke a pipe of peace with them?”

“Yes.”

“And the Choctaws will not be permitted to enter the fort of the Natchez?”

“They will not.”

“Their warriors will leave with you when you go?”

“They will.”

There was something here that she did not like, but she could not quite put her finger on it. She stood staring at the king’s lieutenant, trying to think of something she could say to bind the man to his given word. There was nothing.

The chevalier put his hands behind him, rocking back on the heels of his boots. “There is a condition.”

“Yes, what is it?” she inquired sharply.

“Simply this. The Natchez must burn this fort they have constructed to the ground in earnest of their wish for peace.”

To burn the fort would leave them virtually defenseless against a surprise attack. “I cannot answer for them, but I will carry word of this condition to the Great Sun and to his brother, Reynaud, chief of the warriors.”

Loubois lifted a brow. “You will return? I thought perhaps you would write out a message. You could then stay with us in safety.”

“It’s kind of you to suggest it, but they will be expecting me.”

“Are you certain we can’t persuade you?” St. Amant added his weight to the proposal.

“No. I must go back.”

“As you will.” The commandant of the French expedition bowed. “In the meantime, while we await our answer, we will prepare to receive the captives.”

It was a dismissal. Elise, feeling unaccountably as if she had been manipulated rather than having won a victory, began the short walk back to the fort.

The council of elders that ensued was one of angry and acrimonious wrangling. The older men did not trust the French. The white officer had given in too easily, they said. More, if the Choctaws were not to be allowed into the fort, why were they gathering in ranks outside? Could the French be so without intelligence as to allow the captives to be received by the Choctaws? They would not be turned over to their own people without the payment of a large ransom, in such a case. If that happened, the French would then blame the Natchez, and might that not be used as an excuse to negate the terms of the peace? They would not deliver the captives.

They must deliver the captives, said the younger faction. To fail when they had promised would also negate the peace. The French, with the Choctaws, would fall on them in a pitched fight and what then? They were not as strong as they had been, not since the fever. If the French and the Choctaws overran the fort, there would be a massacre and it was doubtful that their women and children would escape.

Reynaud, after listening closely to Elise and questioning her with care, recommended yet another course. He suggested that they wait until morning to send the pipe of peace, the calumet. There was no reason to hurry their capitulation. There was less chance of making a mistake if they did not rush into anything. Let the French withdraw, as they were already beginning to do. True, the Natchez must release the captives since they had given their word, but they need not destroy the fort until the French and the Choctaws were gone, not if they stipulated this safeguard as a part of the agreement. Then, if the French failed to lift the siege, the Natchez would at least not have the captives to worry about or to feed.

The Great Sun, listening, watching, said nothing. He heard them out, just as he had heard Elise out as she told Reynaud everything that had occurred at the French encampment. It was not, Elise thought as she studied him, because he had nothing to impart to the discussion, but because he wanted to hear all the arguments before stating his own views, before ordering a course of action. If the council could not agree, could not make a recommendation, the decision would rest with him.

“Elise!”

The quiet call came from behind her. She turned from where she had been watching the proceedings of the council at the outer edge of the crowd to see Helene beckoning to her. Rising, she joined the Frenchwoman out of hearing distance of the important meeting.

“What is it?”

“Is it true that we are to be released? Oh, tell me it’s true!”

“I don’t know. It appears so.”

“When?” Helene demanded, catching her arm.

“Perhaps this afternoon, perhaps tomorrow.”

“The rumors said so, but I could not believe them. And Jean-Paul, you saw him, you gave him my message?”

Elise reassured her, telling her word for word what had been said, describing to her how St. Amant had looked, how he had reacted to the news that he had a daughter.

Helene scrubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, then gave Elise a quick hug. “What a fool I am to cry over good news. But I must run and tell the others. There are such rumors flying you would not believe. They will be so happy, so happy.”

The council droned on. Noon came and a meal was served to the members. The people privileged to watch came and went. Outside the wall, Loubois joined the Choctaws, pacing up and down, staring at the fort. After a time he went away, then as the sun began to coast down the sky in the west, he returned.

Elise, her legs and back stiff from sitting, left her post. She walked to the hut, looking inside for Helene. It seemed she had not been there in some time. The fire had died away to coals and ash and the pots left simmering around its verge were cold, the bear grease seasoning congealing on their contents. The baby was gone, too, and the furs where she usually lay were cold.

A peculiar fear gripped Elise. She swung out from the hut, skirting the small mound of the Great Sun and avoiding the plaza. She turned toward the huts of the Commoners where the French captives usually met.

She found Helene and the baby among the other captives in a crowd under the smoke-blackened limbs touched with the tender new green of a sweet gum tree. They surged around her, pleading, demanding, so that a passing Natchez woman laughed to hear their ill-mannered babble as they all tried to talk at once.

They had been told that they would be released, but the day was coming to an end and still the order did not come. The French were withdrawing, except for a token detail, and also many of the Choctaws. Was it all a lie? Were they to be kept forever by the Natchez? Had their country and the Company of the Indies abandoned them?

“We don’t ask for much,” said one woman, twisting her hands, “only the courtesy of being told what is to become of us.”

“I wish I knew,” Elise said helplessly.

“The Natchez!” another woman said and spat.

“The soldiers of the company!” said another and repeated the action.

Helene, with the baby in a wood frame on her back, looked at Elise and lifted her shoulders in a gesture of impatience. “We are pawns, are we not? You who carry the messages, we who wait and wonder how long we are to be slaves.”

“If we were men,” said the first woman who had spat, “we could say to the devil with them all. We could pick up arms and fight our way out.”

“If we were men,” someone echoed.

“If we were men,” said another, “we would be dead.”

Still, they turned almost as one to stare at the entranceway. It stood open, though closely guarded. Through it could be seen the French officers and the single rank of Choctaws, waiting to receive them. Out there were their countrymen, come to rescue them, men who spoke their language, had the same memories and tastes, habits and illusions. All that separated them was a little space, a few yards of ground. The only things that stood between them and freedom were a dozen warriors armed with muskets.

The warriors were guarding against the French coming in, not the women going out. Would they shoot at them, seek to kill unarmed women and children? They had killed many such during the massacre, but that had been while they were in the grip of blood frenzy. Now the captives were considered a part of the Natchez and as such to be protected. Or were they?

“They said we could go,” Helene whispered. “They said we could if the French agreed to leave them alone. The French agreed. Why are they keeping us?”

“It’s cruel, the waiting,” another said.

It was cruel, indeed, bartering with human lives, with the helpless who had never harmed either side. What had women and children to do with war? It was, as Tattooed Arm said, a thing of men. They made the rules and set the penalties; they killed and met death in return. Why should these agreements they made between them be binding upon those who had no say in the proceedings, those who created life but seldom ever took it?

“So close to being free, so close.”

“If there was someone to go first, I would follow.”

“And I. I also. And I.” The voices were quiet but determined.

Helene turned, her pale blue eyes shining. “Elise could do it. Who else better?”

Elise heard their voices as from a great distance. Would this be a betrayal? Would it? Like these women, she had been brought here against her will. Like them, she had lived with a master, done his bidding. But, oh, it was different, so different. Still, had Reynaud not said that the Natchez must let the captives go? Hadn’t he said that even in the event that the French did not keep their word, the village would be better off without them? Where then was the betrayal?

It would be in leaving him.

The pain ran deep and straight, lodging in her heart. How could she leave him? How could she?

There was a gasp from among the women. They turned to stare. Elise swung around to see what had disturbed them. Strutting toward them was an Indian woman. So close was she that she must have heard what they had said. On her broad face was a sneer and in her eyes was the sharp gleam of triumph. It was Red Deer, the mother of Path Bear.