Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (50 page)

The sun reached its zenith and began its downward plunge. The afternoon sped away behind them, and as the twilight deepened, the gurgle and rush of the water, the quiet splash of the paddles seemed to grow louder.

Pierre, in the rear of the pirogue, called out, “Shall we stop for the night?” Reynaud paddled on for two more strokes, then as if rousing himself from some dark reverie, he stopped with visible effort, nodded, and began to pull for shore.

They bathed, Reynaud and Pierre going a short way downstream, Elise and Little Quail remaining near the pirogue. The water was cold but refreshing, a boon to muscles stiff from sitting so long. To Elise it seemed to take her fatigue and wash it away downstream. Depression had gradually settled upon her during the day as she had accepted Reynaud’s silence, the fact that he did not seem to believe what she had said, and also the curious, anticlimactic ending of the meeting between the Natchez and the French expeditionary force. The river also took some of that depression away.

Little Quail, treading water, blew at a wisp of dark hair that persisted in falling into her eyes, smiling at Elise beside her. She slapped water at Elise and they indulged in a mock battle that served to warm them and work off some of their tension. Elise, blinded by water and exhausted by the game, plunged away from the Indian woman and, as her feet struck bottom, waded to shore. Little Quail came after her, giggling as she reached for a piece of leather with which to dry herself. Her humor faded slowly and site turned toward Elise.

“I don’t think I have ever said to you how much I am grateful that you asked me to save Pierre that day.”

“It was a good thing that you did.”

“For him, yes, but also for myself. I love him, Elise, as I have never loved before.”

Elise sent the woman a smiling look. “Indeed?”

“Ah! You know it is true. But I wished to say thank you in case there was not another chance.”

“Not another chance?” Elise asked slowly, her smile fading.

“We know not what we will find at the French fort. It may be the commandant will not accept me. He is known to be a wise and generous man, one who ignores the quarrels of New Orleans and the orders that come from there if it so pleases him. Pierre is well known to him, of course, and it will be understood that he had to fight alongside the Natchez after he was captured, but that does not mean he will wish to have us at his post.”

“And if he will not, what then?” Elise asked, frowning.

“It is agreed between us that we will go into the woods or perhaps to the Spanish at Los Adaes. Pierre will resume his trading and I will travel with him.”

Elise flicked the water from her skin and began to get back into her petticoats and gown. With her head down so that she need not look at the Indian woman, she asked, “And what of Reynaud? Has he said what he will do?”

“No. It is not quite the same with him, you see. He was not captured like Pierre, but led the Natchez of his own will. He is half French and a man of property, but this will not be forgiven. When he has taken you to the fort, he will perhaps remain with us or he may rejoin the Natchez. I don’t know.”

There was no time for more. The voices of the men, talking a little above normal to warn of their approach, were heard and the two women hurried to finish dressing.

They lighted a small fire, carefully shielded in a scooped-out pit, to heat their evening meat and warming drinks with which to wash it down. While Elise and Little Quail busied themselves around the coals, the two men constructed the usual shelters of saplings bent in a half circle over the bed furs and covered with cloth. Watching their work with quick, surreptitious glances, Elise saw that they were making only two, each of a width for two people. The sight brought back a wave of memories. It also brought an odd hope and an excitement that she suppressed as firmly as any Natchez woman.

Reynaud tried to send Pierre to sleep while he took the first watch. His friend refused and in the end they flipped a coin. The watch was Pierre’s and he took a musket and moved to squat beneath a tree in the darkness some distance from the fire. Elise crawled into the shelter and, thinking wryly of how easy it had been to get out of her Natchez costume, began to take off her velvet gown. She could hear the quiet murmur of the voices of Reynaud and Pierre as, naked, she slid under the furs. After a time, they stopped.

She was relaxed and warm, but wide awake in spite of her long day, when Reynaud slipped into the shelter. His movements were stealthy as if he preferred not to wake her or feared that he might. She spoke then, as much because the words could not be kept inside any longer as to save him the trouble of being so quiet.

“You didn’t answer my question this morning. Didn’t you believe what I said?”

“How can I?” he answered when he had thrown aside his breechclout and lain down facing her with the furs over the lower part of his body. “I had told you that I loved you. Why would I send you away?”

“I thought — it might be out of nobility.”

He laughed. “You misjudge me.”

“Do I? I think not.”

“If you had known me as well as you think, then you would not have doubted me.”

“I … My doubt was for the — the madness of this war, the betrayal it might bring.”

There was no relenting in his tone as he answered. “You should have known I would never willingly have let you go.”

“Not even for my own good?”

“No, not even for that.”

She pushed up to rest on one elbow, facing him in the darkness. “And yet you are taking me to Fort Saint Jean Baptiste after which you will disappear into the wilderness.”

“Who told you — Ah, Little Quail.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“You would expect me to throw myself on the tender mercy of the French for your sake?” The dryness in his tone had a forced sound.

I would expect you to take me with you
. The words rang in her mind though she did not speak them. With them rose such anguish that she thought she could not bear it. When had she come to love him like this? When?

“We — we are married,” she began.

“After the fashion of the Natchez, without the blessing of a priest. It means nothing.”

“Does it mean nothing to you?”

He ignored the question. “I am half French and half Natchez. In peace it did not matter, but now we are at war, one with the other. I left the French for the people of my mother and there is no ceremony, no test of the gauntlet, that will return me to a state of grace in this colony. I have no rights. I am an enemy and the reasons matter not a whit. St. Denis may receive me for the sake of friendship in other days, but it will be for a few hours only. After that, what is there for me but the woods?”

“And what about me?”

“You were born to the security of property and the benefits of civilization. It was wrong of me to take you from them. It would be wronger still to keep you away longer.”

“Once again you leave me little choice,” she whispered.

“What?”

“It could be that I — prefer — to remain with you.”

He stiffened beside her in the dimness. It was long moments before he spoke and then his words were strained. “The inclination will pass. What you feel is only gratitude because I have protected you and perhaps because I—”

“—taught me to love.”

“—allowed you to set free your natural desires.”

There had been pain in his words; she would have sworn to it. Were the arguments he had brought forth meant to convince her or only himself? It mattered little since she could not seem to reach him with words alone. Instead she stretched out her hand to touch him, trailing her fingertips along his forearm to the hard planes of his chest. “You think all I feel for you is gratitude and desire?”

“I know it,” he answered, his voice deep and rough, “but for now, as in the past, it is enough.”

He drew her to him, holding her tightly, molding her to the long, hard length of his body as if he could absorb that essence of her through the thin satin of her skin. She clung to him in the anguish of fear for what he meant to do in the days ahead, for what would become of her without him, for the price that might be asked of them from an unforgiving world. Once before she had known the distress of thinking that their night together might be the last. Now the feeling returned a thousandfold. She wanted to take him inside herself, deeply, indelibly. She wanted to feel his strength plunging into her and, in returning it, know that they were linked, inseparable, two parts of a whole.

The need inside them was a spreading flame bright-edged with desperation. Fear for what the days to come might bring fed their desire, and the pain of a parting that seemed to be hurtling toward them gave it strength. Trembling, their eyes tightly closed, they sought in each other the ageless affirmation of life and the boon of momentary forgetfulness. They found both in the fierce and unmeasured rhythms of the passion that joined them, but though they lay with bodies closely entwined and panting breaths mingling as their mouths clung, they could not hold on to them.

Eight days later they reached Fort Saint Jean Baptiste. They knew they were coming near after they passed the
Poste des Rapides
, portaging around the rapids in the early morning without raising an alarm from the small garrison of the post. They entered the Natchitoches country, coming upon the cleared lands of the outlying settlement and the cabins with smoke trailing away from the mud-daubed chimneys. Finally they rounded a bend and saw the fort lying before them.

It was built in a rectangle with jutting, diamond-shaped bastions at three corners and at the fourth a rectangular one. The palisade was massive, but not as thick as that of the Natchez, primarily because it was not expected to withstand cannon fire. There was no sign of alarm; the gates stood open and people moved in and out freely. There was, however, a full complement of men on watch on the parapets.

By the time the pirogue had pulled into the landing and they had stepped on shore, a squad of soldiers had advanced to the gates and stood ready to meet them. A tall, handsome man with a soldier’s bearing and an air of authority moved to take his place in front of the squad.

Reynaud, his movements fluid and his back straight despite days bent over a paddle, strode toward the gate. Pierre fell into step at his side and Elise, with Little Quail, followed. Elise’s attention was on the officer who waited. He had to be the commandant here, Louis Antoine Jucherau de St. Denis.

St. Denis was reputed to be an intelligent man and a fair one, a man who paid only as much attention to the dictates from New Orleans as was necessary. Rather than adhere to a ruinous policy of trading exclusively with faraway France, he turned a blind eye to commerce with the Spanish at the fort of Los Adaes less than sixty leagues away to the increased profit of the colonists in his jurisdiction. It was not surprising, perhaps, since he had been a trader before being named commandant. Much good had come from his close ties with the Spaniards, including his marriage to his beautiful wife Manuela, who had been the granddaughter of the commandant of the Spanish Presidio San Juan Bautista. His policy toward the Natchitoches, Caddo, and Adaes Indians was fair and openhanded, and his grasp of the conflicting and shifting loyalties of the tribes was firm. The result was stability in this section of the colony. St. Denis enjoyed somewhat despotic power, due to the distance to the center of government, and was known to be unconventional. And yet he was also a faithful servant of his king.

How would he receive them, given his character and his duties? That was the question.

There might have been a snapped order to fire, a command for immediate arrest, or, at the very least, a refusal to allow them to set foot in the fort or to remain in the surrounding country. Instead, St. Denis returned Reynaud’s bow with a grave inclination of his head.

“My apologies,” Reynaud said, “for what must be an unwelcome visit. I ask only a small indulgence: a few minutes of your time.”

St. Denis’s eyes were narrowed as he studied them. Finally he asked, “You have come from the Natchez country?”

“Yes. We have news of what has taken place there if you care to hear it.”

“I’ve heard of the expedition, as who hasn’t? I have also had a dispatch warning us, quite unnecessarily, to hold ourselves ready in case of trouble. I had heard, too, that you had joined the Natchez. I can only assume that there has been a defeat.”

Reynaud inclined his head in agreement. “Of a kind.”

“Your presence is not, I take it, an indication that we should prepare to fight to the death?”

“Hardly.”

“Then come inside to my quarters,” St. Denis invited, adding with a faint smile, “I have an obligation to hear all reports that might aid in our defense.”

The commandant’s office, which also served as his living quarters, was directly in front of the gate, just forward of the center of the compound. To the right lay a long, low building that served as a barracks, with a separate dining hall at one end and a guardhouse at the other. Near the left rear bastion was a small building set with a steeple that marked it as a church. It, along with another one-room cabin that served as lodging for the itinerant priest, made a protective bulwark between a small powder house and the open block of the fort interior. On the left side of the compound was the kitchen from which issued the delicious smell of roasting beef, with a privy and servants’ quarters strung out beyond. The buildings were constructed of logs set in the upright fashion, chinked with mud thickened with deer hair and gray moss, and roofed with cypress shingles.