The Pelican Bride (20 page)

Dufresne bristled. “What if I did? I’m detached to Bienville, not La Salle, and it’s my job to keep the commander informed.”

“And yourself in the process.” Marc-Antoine flicked the parch
ment at Dufresne, who grabbed it, startled. “Take your scaly self back to headquarters and spy on someone else. I’ve got work to do.” He turned to Father Mathieu. “Are all your goods onboard, Father?”

“Yes, I—”

“Wait.” Dufresne interrupted the priest with a chopping motion of the parchment. “Father Mathieu, you take too much upon yourself. Father Henri says you have superseded his authority on many occasions of late, and he insists that you back off. Is it true that you performed a marriage ceremony yesterday without his permission?”

Father Mathieu glanced at Tristan. “I did perform the wedding of Monsieur Lanier and Mademoiselle Gaillain. But I don’t see that Brother Henri has any say in the duties I take on as chaplain.”

Dufresne’s complexion rivaled the color of his hair. “But as Father Henri is pastor of the Louisiane parish, duly commissioned by the bishop, protocol requires that you request permission from him before ministering to civilians.”

Tristan stepped between the aide-major and the priest. “Dufresne, you are ridiculous. What possible difference could it make to you who performed my wedding ceremony?”

“It—I—it is the principle of the thing!” Dufresne blustered. “Ridiculous, am I? That wedding was illegal, and you have ruined that young woman. Who will want her, now that—”

Tristan’s fist connected with Dufresne’s jaw, sending him flailing backward to tumble, cursing, head-over-heels down the bluff. Tristan leaned over the edge of the bluff to watch, shaking out his bruised knuckles, while Marc-Antoine shouted with laughter.

Father Mathieu gave a sigh of irritation before following Dufresne at a safer, more decorous pace. “Tristan,” he called over his shoulder, “please collect yourself while I check on the poor fellow.”

“Yes, Tristan,” his brother mocked, “you have exploded all over the lot of us. What demon has prompted you to such violence?
Oh, wait, I know—it is lack of sleep. Nothing a good nap won’t put to rights.”

Ignoring him, Tristan watched Dufresne crash to a halt against one of the boats and lie there dazed until one of the cadets reached to give him a hand to his feet. The aide-major stood there with mud streaking his hair and face, one epaulet dangling off his shoulder, holes ripped in both knees of his fancy breeches, mouth opening and closing like a river bass.

Satisfied, Tristan turned and gave his brother a sour smile. “I’ve been wanting to do that.”

Geneviève woke up when a mannerless rooster announced daylight. She opened her eyes and stretched, yawning, then sat up, looking around for Tristan. The only remaining evidence of his presence was the mussed bedding and the fact that her clothing lay in an untidy heap on the floor just inside the bedroom door. She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples as floods of sensation washed from her toes to the roots of her hair and back again.

Married. Taken as a woman. Abandoned.

Her elbows went to her updrawn knees, and her hands slid to cover her face. She hunched, trembling, afraid to move lest she retch. Dear Lord, what had she done?

Several ragged breaths later, she began to calm, and the nausea faded. Another deep breath, slower this time, and she took her hands from her eyes. Clenching them against her abdomen, she looked around the room. She was in Charles Levasseur’s cabin, one of the larger houses in the settlement. The thatching of the roof had rotted in places, allowing last night’s heavy rain to penetrate and leave wet patches on the floor. Fortunately, the ceiling above the bed remained intact, else she and Tristan would have had a miserable wedding night.

She closed her eyes as if that would shut out the overpowering
intimacies of the past hours, but her husband’s scent remained all around her, in the bedding, no doubt in her own hair and skin. He might be a hundred miles away and she would still be able to feel the brush of his beard against her face, the tenderness of his lips on hers, the strength of his back when she flattened her palms against it.

This would never do. He was gone. He had left while she slept, without kissing her, without saying goodbye, as if she were a courtesan that he had bought for the night. There was every possibility he would never return. So she must piece herself back together. She must go on as if her world had not once more turned on its head, as if she had not deliberately removed any chance of marrying a safe young Canadian soldier and producing little Catholic babies to be raised in accordance with the True Church of Louis XIV.

Bienville was going to have her arrested, if she didn’t get out of bed, get dressed, and preempt him.

So she did that. Ten minutes later she picked up the comb that someone—presumably Madame L’Anglois—had left on the corner table and started combing the snarls out of her hair. When she had finally managed to tame it in a braid, she made her way slowly, with wobbly knees, through the cabin’s front room and out onto the gallery.

The sudden glare of sunlight had her squinting and shielding her eyes with her hand, but as her eyes adjusted, she saw that a woman sat on the front steps of the house across the street. Ysabeau Bonnet, she realized, recognizing the faded yellow dress and red-gold curls. She looked a bit dejected, chin in hand, elbow resting on her knee, but at least she didn’t seem to be openly crying.

Geneviève sighed. She had no time to waste. But she should at least stop to speak to the girl. “Ysabeau?” she called as she crossed the street. “Are you all right?”

Ysabeau sat up. “Geneviève? What were you doing in Monsieur Levasseur’s cabin?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.” Restraining a wince, Geneviève sat down on the step above Ysabeau and hugged her knees. “Why are you out here alone so early in the morning? Where are the Lemays?”

“Monsieur Lemay has gone to the powderworks. I came out to feed the chickens because the boys are arguing over some stupid toy, and Angela is in bed, claiming she’s having labor pains. She’s been having them every morning for the last week. I think she’s faking, since they always seem to miraculously clear up by lunch.” Ysabeau clenched her small fists as she glanced at Geneviève. “I’ve had all I can stand of this family. I’m going to marry Monsieur Connard today.”

“Ysette, please don’t do anything rash.” The irony of her plea took Geneviève to the bounds of self-control, but with a supreme effort she managed to keep a straight face. “Have you even spoken to Monsieur Connard for more than five minutes?”

“He came to see me as soon as they released him from the guardhouse yesterday. He is—he is quite good-looking, if one squints a bit. And he wagered a
hundred livres
for me, Geneviève! That’s a lot of money—isn’t it?” She looked uncertain, but before Geneviève could answer, she stood up, smacking her hands together. “Anyway, he is as good as any of these backwoods Canadians, so I should take him before he changes his mind.” She jumped to the ground and marched off in the direction of the fort.

“Ysabeau! Please don’t do this!” Geneviève went after her, but since the girl refused to even look at her again, she gave up and stopped at the corner of the street. She watched Ysabeau disappear behind the house at the end of the next block. There was no one to whom she could go for counsel. Father Mathieu was gone with Tristan—

A singularly unproductive thought. Plans. She must make plans. Tristan had agreed she should support herself with her bread-baking, so perhaps she should talk to Monsieur Burelle about that.

Squaring her shoulders, she set off for the tavern. Tristan was gone, but there was hope for a secure life here, for herself and Aimée. He had himself encouraged her to remember the good times in order to survive the bad times.

She thought about the note Cavalier had placed in her Bible, just before he left her with Father Mathieu. Worried that she might find herself in as precarious a situation as the one she’d escaped, he’d warned her to be very careful to whom she revealed her faith. Cavalier only asked her to make what observations she could, put them in a short letter, and send them through an Indian woman named Nika to the Huguenot pastor in Carolina.

Geneviève had of course eagerly agreed. After all, Cavalier had saved her life, and she owed him everything.

But her perspective was so different since she had come to Louisiane, lived here among its inhabitants,
married
Tristan Lanier. Her bitterness and fear—the rage she had felt toward the King and all he stood for—all that had blurred into the daily rhythms of making a new home. When Tristan began to explain last night the complicated political inter-workings among French, British, and Indian powers, she had almost stopped him. The less she knew, the less she must be obliged to divulge to Cavalier.

Thoughts aboil, she was almost at the end of the block when an ear-splitting scream issued from an open window behind her. She stopped in her tracks. Ysabeau had said the little boys, aged three and five if she remembered correctly, were at home by themselves except for their mother, who was about to give birth any day now. Should she go directly for help? Surgeon-Major Barraud, even if he weren’t a useless drunk, was already on his way upriver with Father Mathieu and the Lanier brothers. Sister Marie Grissot had been named midwife. She was a sweet woman, but notably slow and easily flustered.

Reluctantly Geneviève turned around and headed up the brick pathway to the Lemays’ two-story house. It was small and rough
compared to Continental standards, but it was one of the largest and most luxurious in the settlement. Powdermaker Xavier Lemay possessed a skill critical to both military and civilian life, and he was evidently well compensated.

She mounted the steps to the gallery and hesitated at the front door, which stood open. Two little boys with curly dark hair and big brown eyes perched at the foot of the stairs, the younger one with his thumb in his mouth and the elder glaring at her truculently, both grubby fists clutching a wooden toy trailing a string.

“Good morning,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “Is that your mama upstairs? She seems to be having some difficulty.”

“Mama’s havin’ the baby,” the little one said around his thumb.

“No she ain’t, stupid,” said the older one. “Ysabeau said it wouldn’t be for another few days.”

Another scream pierced the air, perhaps amplified by the uncarpeted hardwood floor and stairs. Both children looked frightened.

“Let me check on your mama, boys. No, stay here. I’ll be right back.” She hiked her skirt to leap lightly over them and hurried up the stairs. At the landing she stopped to listen and followed the gasps of pain coming from one of the two bedrooms. “Angela? I’m coming. Are you having the—” Unable to finish, she halted in the doorway to suck in a breath, then rushed to the bed, where poor Angela, blown up to whale-like proportions, writhed in pain with her bedgown wadded about her waist. Geneviève took the woman’s hand and winced at the strength of that vise-like grip. “How long have you been like this?”

“The pains have been coming—off and on—all night,” Angela gasped between her teeth. “Ysabeau—so hateful, I can’t stand it anymore. Geneviève, please get Sister Gris. She’ll know what to do—she delivered the Canelles’ baby.”

“Yes, of course. Can I do anything for you before I go?”

“Where are Serge and Émile?”

“Downstairs playing. I’ll watch out for them.”

“Thank you.” Angela’s head twisted back and forth on the bolster. “Could I have some water? I’m so thirsty.”

Geneviève ran back down the stairs, giving the little boys a reassuring pat on the head as she passed, and ducked into the kitchen. Fortunately she found a pitcher of clean water on a table and poured a little into a pewter cup. She took it upstairs to the uncomfortable young mother, then dashed back down the stairs.

She stopped long enough to reassure the boys that she would be right back, that they should stay in the salon and play quietly. Then she hurried outside, down the gallery steps, and along the rue de Ruessavel toward the nursing sisters’ little house on the next block. She knocked on the front door, shouting, “Sister Gris!” Without waiting for an answer, she opened it and found Dames Grissot and Linant blinking at her over a breakfast of eggs and hominy. Both were in habits without veils.

“Geneviève!” Sister Linant set down her tea cup with a thump. “What’s the matter, child?”

Geneviève addressed Sister Gris. “It’s Angela—she’s having her baby, and it doesn’t look good. She’s been in pain for more than a day—I told her I’d come for you. Please, Sister—”

“Of course.” Sister Gris rose, pushing away from the table. She looked at her friend. “Forgive me for leaving you with the dishes.”

“Go ahead, don’t worry. But, Marie, you need your wimple.”

“Oh, yes.” Distracted, Sister Gris put her hand to her wiry gray locks. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Geneviève and hurried through the doorway into the second room. Within a few minutes she returned, wearing the distinctive gray headgear of her order, albeit slightly askew, and she and Geneviève were on their way back to the Lemay house.