Shadowbrook (79 page)

The brother of Shingas the mighty war sachem waited a moment more. If Teedyuscung objected to his speaking for all the Delaware he would say so now. There was no objection. Pisquetomen got to his feet and faced Governor Denny. “The Delaware accept your invitation. We will be glad to share the warmth of the old fire with our brothers in Philadelphia.”

It was done. One way or another every Indian in the Ohio Country had promised to withdraw their allegiance from the French and, if asked, accept war belts
from the English. Corm’s heart pounded in his chest. He turned to look at Quent “Good plan,” he said softly.

“Good dream,” Quent answered.

Three days of celebration drinking and feasting and whooping and dancing ended the Easton Conference. Corm and Quent were invited to the Kahniankehaka fire. They went as white men, wearing buckskins not breechclouts. On the last night they sat together, a slight distance separating them from their Kahniankehaka hosts. The sparks of the many fires rose like the fireflies of summer, and the smell of roasting meat put both men in mind of feasts long past. “How long since you’ve been in Singing Snow?” Quent asked.

“Twelve moons. Leaf Falling last year.”

“That’s bad.”

“
Ahaw,
it is. You?”

“Worse. Not since before we met in Québec. Has to be three years. You heard anything about Bishkek?”

“Nothing. But he must be well. Someone would come looking for one of us otherwise. Pondise probably. He found you before, in New York City no less.”

“Ahaw,”
Quent agreed “Pondise is pretty good at looking. Speaking of which … You ever find that Acadian woman? Marni?”

“Marni Benoit. No, I haven’t found her.”

“Still looking?”

“Ahaw.”
Corm got to his feet. “I’m still looking.”

Three weeks later the French who occupied Great Forks, the place where the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers joined to form the Ohio, faced an oncoming force of the English and their Indian allies that outnumbered them five to one. The French garrison set Fort Duquesne alight and fled. The prize General Braddock and fifteen hundred men had died trying to capture was taken without a shot. Within hours the English began building Fort Pitt on the rabble of Fort Duquesne.

Word of this latest disaster reached Québec on a bleak December day in the first week of Advent, when all the prayers of the Divine Office begged God for a savior to come and ransom mankind from the captivity of sin. Mère Marie Rose told her nuns the news at the recreation that followed their Monday dinner of stewed cabbage and, for each of them, a sixth part of a well-boiled duck egg left in the turn by a kind
habitant

“Dear Sisters,” the abbess announced as soon as the bell for recreation began,
“the duck egg was the gift of a benefactor. It was for third portion.” She went on to the concerns of the outside world. “I must tell you the sad news that Fort Duquesne has fallen to the English.”

“But what is to happen?” Soeur Joseph demanded. “How—”

“We will do more penance. And pray harder for our soldiers, and for the poor heathen souls who will now be exposed to the Protestant heresy.”

“And what of us here in Québec,
ma Mère?
” Soeur Angelique’s eyes were enormous—she was glowing with happiness. “Will the English come and kill us all, and make us martyrs who go straight to heaven?”

“I think you must wait a bit longer for martyrdom,
ma chère petite.
Québec is inviolable. No English warship can pass through La Traverse.”

Nicole’s heart beat fiercely, but she did not look up from her darning. A chart of the waters around Québec. So important that the defense of all New France depended on it and delivered by her into the hands of Monsieur le marquis de Montcalm.

“Besides”—Soeur Celeste this time, practical as always—“whatever is to happen, martyrdom or anything else, you must wait until next summer, Angelique. It is almost winter. There will be no more war for the time being.”

TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1759
BAYOU ISOLÉ LOUISIANA

THE CANOE GLIDED across the barely moving water of the bayou, carried on the sluggish current. Mostly Corm sat with his paddle across his knees, dipping it into the water only when he needed to adjust direction. A
Cmokmanuk
cabin on the right bank, he’d been told, hidden in the trees. He must look with both eyes if he was not to miss it.

It was easy to miss anything here. The moss hung in whispering ropes that obscured and distorted the landscape. The only sound was the low hum of insects, and the occasional call of some bird he didn’t know. It was like being in a different world, like the chanting at a New Moon Telling.
Haya, haya, jayek
so, so, all of us together. The bayou too made your heart beat to a different rhythm, but not because you were one with others. Bayou Isolé was as lonely as its name. Marni’s place in Louisiana, if he ever found it, seemed to be at least as remote as her farm in l’Acadie.

A couple of times he almost drifted into sleep, then pulled himself back with a surge of fear that he could be lulled into such a dangerous lapse in a strange place. Probably didn’t matter. He’d spent a couple of days with some local Choctaw and they were friendly enough; alligators were the only thing to worry about, and so far he hadn’t seen any.
The one you are looking for, the squaw. She eats
kokotni.

There was a slight bend up ahead. He put his paddle in the water to make sure the canoe handled the turn properly. That’s when he saw her.

Marni was by herself, crouching in the shallows by the bank. Her pale skin was more gold than he remembered, tanned by the sun of this place, and she’d woven her wheaten into a single braid that hung down over one shoulder. She had a basket under her arm, and it looked like she was washing whatever was in it in the water of the bayou. She looked up, startled when the prow of the canoe breached her vision.

“
Pierre? C’es toi? Je n’ai pas pensé que
—Oh.” It was a sound between a gasp and a sigh, as if the air had been forced out of her chest by a great weight. “Oh.”

“Hello, Marni.” Corm used the paddle to move the canoe toward the shore.

“Oh.” Then she simply stared.

There was a rope coiled in the bottom of the canoe. He picked it up and gestured toward one of the tall trees on the shore.
“Aide-moi.”

She didn’t say anything, but after a time, when he thought he could hear his heart beating, or maybe hers, she nodded and stood up. She’d hiked the skirt of her dress up almost to her waist and her long legs were bare. He could see the droplets of water pearling on her thighs. They were almost the same color gold as her face. Did she go naked in this place? Like a squaw.

Marni left her basket on the shore and approached the canoe and stretched out her hand to take the rope. Their fingers touched when he gave her one end. She made that same breathy sound then quickly turned away and waded ashore. Corm fed her the slack and she looped the line around an overhanging branch and made it fast. He climbed out of the canoe and went ashore. “Aren’t you going to say anything to me? Not even, ‘Hello, Cormac’?”

“I …” She stopped, ran her tongue over her lips. “I didn’t …”

“You didn’t expect ever to see me again.”

“Not just that. I didn’t think you were real. Not until I touched your hand.”

He looked around at the landscape that was so different from the one where they’d been together. “It’s hard to know what’s real in this place.”

“How did you find me?”

“An old woman in my Potawatomi village—”

“Singing Snow?”

“Yes, Singing Snow.” He had forgotten how much he’d told her during those long winter nights when the whole world contained only the two of them. “Shabnokis. She told me the woman I was looking for ate
kokotni,
alligator. Had to be here.”

“I never ate an aliigator.”

“She didn’t mean ‘ate’ exactly. It was just a way of telling me where you were.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Marni’s question startled him. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was asking. “I went to see her about something else, then she—”

“I meant why were you looking for me. Why now? It’s almost four years.”

“I never stopped looking.”

Marni shook her head. “Don’t lie. I waited. You didn’t come.”

“Yes, I did. The embers of your house were still warm when I got there. I found the curé, Monsieur Faucon the black robe. He had made a drawing of you standing on the ramparts at Halifax waiting for the British ship. He said he’d seen you just a couple of days before, but that you’d already left. In his picture, you were smiling.”

“I hated l’Acadie. You knew that.”

“Hated it so much you couldn’t wait another few weeks? I told you I would return. Why didn’t you trust me?”

“It had been six months since the banishing started. I knew you’d have heard about it. I figured if you were going to come, you’d have come by then.”

“You figured wrong.”

She turned away without answering, yanking down her dress so the skirt covered her legs. She picked up her basket. “Come to the house,” she said. “I’ll make you something to eat, then you must go.”

“Just like that? After I’ve come all this—”

Marni strode off, not listening to him. “Are you coming?” she called back. Corm followed her.

The house wasn’t far, but he’d never have seen it. It was tucked cleverly into the trees, and the clearing that served as a garden was in the rear. It wouldn’t be visible from the bayou unless you knew it was there.

Marni stopped before she opened the door. “How did you find me here?”

“I asked some Choctaw.” He reached out and touched her plait with one finger. “When I described the color of your hair, they knew exactly who I meant. Besides, they said there aren’t many white women around here.”

“A few whores,” Marni said. “Over by Bayou Septembre. They service the fishermen.”

She started to push open the door. Corm stopped her. “Is Pierre, a fisherman?”

“Non,”
she said. “
Pas un pêcheur.
Pierre traps. Snakes mostly. Just now he has gone to Nouvelle Orléans to sell his skins. Of course, the war…”

She broke off, catching her lower lip in her teeth. He had seen that gesture a hundred times in his dreams. “Marni, I…”

“It was the war you expected, wasn’t it? The reason you could not stay with me but had to—”

A voice from inside the house stopped her words.
“Maman! C’es toi?”

There were two little girls. Twins, Marni said. “Yvette and Cécüe.” Neither looked anything like her, nor did they look as young as they must be if—“Do not look so startled,” she murmured. “They are five. Their mother died when they were born. They were eighteen months old when I came.”

The one called Yvette took the basket from Marni’s hands and squealed with delight. “So many, Maman! We will have a feast.”

“Yes, a feast. This is Monsieur Shea. He is a friend from l’Acadie. He will eat with us. Go, get things ready.
Vite!
”

The children prepared the table. Marni made a kind of corn gruel cooked with some of the saladings from the garden out back, and boiled the creatures she had been gathering from the bayou when he first saw her.
“Les écrevises.”
She held up one that had turned bright red now that it was cooked and showed him how to strip away the shell. “It is the tails you eat. They are very good.”