Savage Lands (18 page)

Auguste let the silence settle. Then very quietly he asked the chief how it was that he knew such things.

‘The Chickasaw have long been our adversaries,’ the chief replied. ‘The prudent warrior knows the business of his enemies at least as well as his own.’

‘And what answer did the Chickasaw chiefs give the Englishmen?’ Auguste asked.

The chief shook his head. He did not know. He knew only that the envoys had brought guns and gunpowder to the Chickasaw and that the Chickasaw chiefs had not refused them. In addition, the English had asked permission to return, and this too the Chickasaw chiefs had not refused.

Auguste nodded. Then he turned to Babelon and translated what the chief had said.

‘Those bastards.’ Babelon frowned, his fingers drumming on his thighs. ‘Those slippery savage bastards.’

‘Our people have made many promises to the Chickasaw that we have not honoured,’ Auguste murmured. ‘More presents, trade advantages, a fort in their province. So far they have received none of them.’

‘But they smoked the
calumet
with us, did they not, accepted the gifts we gave them? So they declared their allegiance to us, to the French Crown.’

‘And when we smoke the
calumet
with the Choctaw, we bind ourselves in allegiance to their neighbour, who is also their oldest and most powerful enemy. It is to be expected that the Chickasaw keep an open door to Carolina. Their eastern boundary is very susceptible to English attack.’

‘So they betray us.’

‘Not yet. But it is by no means improbable.’

The Choctaw chief, who had remained silent, spoke then to Auguste in his tongue. His face was grave.

‘What does he say?’ Babelon demanded impatiently.

‘He suggests we go directly to the Chickasaw and declare our friendship to them. He believes that they are still anxious to keep faith with us, but we must offer them caresses and assure them of our steadfastness.’

Babelon shook his head.

‘That is impossible. We are expected back in Mobile. There is business there that cannot wait.’

‘Surely the commandant–’

‘What the devil has the commandant to do with this?’

Auguste hesitated.

‘I have translated poorly,’ he said at last. ‘The chief is adamant. If we do not go there presently, we risk our friendship with his nation as well as with the Chickasaw.’

‘Well, then we must take that risk,’ Babelon retorted. ‘The Chickasaw are not our only allies in this godforsaken place.’

He glared at Auguste, who flinched and looked down at the ground. The chief of the Choctaw observed them and said nothing. Babelon sighed.

‘Does it not strike you as questionable, how much the honoured chief knows of his enemy’s business?’ he said more gently. ‘If the English have made approaches to the Chickasaw, then it is likely they have come here also. Who is to say that this is not a trap, an ambush?’

‘The chief is a man of honour.’

‘Honour? Auguste, he is a savage. Like all the other savages we have purchased his allegiance with gifts, with guns. Perhaps the English offer better terms. No. Tell the chief that we shall go to the Chickasaw but that first we must warn the commandant. Bienville knows this game of old. If there is something rotten here then he will smell it.’

Auguste hesitated. Then he did as he was bid. He chose his words carefully. The chief frowned. Then he nodded.

‘You are quite certain?’ Auguste asked when darkness had fallen and the dancing was begun. ‘That we are to return to Mobile?’

‘And from there to the Mississippi. The Natchez expect me.’

‘But–’

‘Auguste, do not be naive. Can you not see that this is exactly what the English want? To distract us from the business of trading, of securing supplies for the settlement, until we are too weak to withstand their assault?’

Babelon’s face was shiny and in his eyes Auguste saw only the flames of the cane torches, leaping yellow in their curved glass shades.

‘The Choctaw would not betray us,’ Auguste said quietly. ‘They have pledged their allegiance most solemnly.’

‘Their solemnity is hardly at issue. Whether the Choctaw are in the pay of English masters or whether they are only their dupes, the end is the same. They send us to the Chickasaw and, in all likelihood, to a trap. We lose nothing by caution.’

Auguste was silent.

‘With the river in flow, it should take us no more than a matter of days to reach Mobile. Then, well, it is a question for the commandant. Let him decide.’

The current was swift and, as Babelon had predicted, they were returned to Mobile within the week. From the river they went directly to meet with the commandant. Auguste told Bienville what he knew, then, as instructed, he waited outside as the commandant conferred with Babelon. When the two men emerged, they informed Auguste that he was to return to the Choctaw village with a guide and require of the Choctaw chief that he attend the commandant in Mobile at his earliest convenience. As for Babelon, he would travel directly to the Mississippi so that the business interests of the settlement might not be compromised.

Auguste accepted the commandant’s orders. When they had been dismissed, the two men walked slowly back towards the dock. It was raining, a fine drizzle that clung to their coats.

‘A drink at Burelle’s?’ Babelon asked.

Auguste shook his head.

‘You must be impatient to see your wife.’

‘She will look even better after another drink. So will the woodrat, come to that.’

The thought of the opossum gave Auguste a tiny squeeze of pleasure. At the corner of rue Condé, he stopped and bid his friend farewell.

‘Godspeed,’ he said. ‘Go safely.’

‘And you, sir. And you.’

Auguste turned away.

‘Just one thing more,’ Babelon called after him. ‘Any chance of having that quire I loaned you? I may be required to keep a log of things. You know.’

Auguste fingered the familiar square of the book in his pocket. In the time that he had had it, the stuff of his coat had grown corners to accommodate it.

‘Of course,’ he said, and handed it reluctantly to Babelon, who slid it into his own pocket. ‘The drawings . . . I am sorry if I have used too many pages.’

‘On the contrary,’ Babelon protested. ‘With your pretty illustrations to enliven them, perhaps even business accounts may prove tolerable.’

When Babelon had gone Auguste lingered in the street, biting at his thumbnail. Then he turned and walked slowly towards the rue de Tonti. He tried to fix his thoughts upon anticipation, of the opossum who would scramble onto his shoulder and nip gently at his ear, of the tulip tree in his garden that would be just coming into flower, but they slid away from him and he thought instead of the commandant, who, before dismissing Auguste, had poured wine for the three of them and raised his glass.

‘To effective espionage,’ he had said, tossing back a gulp. He wore no neckcloth and his shirt was open, revealing the twined mass of serpents inked upon his chest. The wine had been sour. Later, when the bottle was empty, Bienville had shaken his head.

‘Surely the chief of the Chickasaw is not such a fool as the Choctaw would have us believe. Does he not know how the perfidious English whistle down his kind like turkeys from a tree? And for what? For a few muskets? More favourable terms of trading? Do not mistake me, I am only too familiar with the imperatives of commerce. But the English? The English worship profit as the savage worships the sun, not for the warmth of it on his back, but because without it day would never come. Treachery runs in their veins. There is nothing, I swear it, not kinsman nor country nor the kingdom of God Himself, that an Englishman would not sell at the right price.’

E
very month of that dreary winter began with the faint fresh breath of hope and ended in cramps and clotted blood. Then it was spring again. Jean-Claude went north.

When the rains came, the river burst its banks anew and the houses in the lower part of town were once more flooded. The residents were obliged to rely on their pirogues to get about town and Elisabeth made room for the family of Renée Gilbert, whose home was several feet under water. Confined to the cabin the two women waited, the children peevish and fidgety about them. Elisabeth bitterly begrudged the violation of her solitude. She was irritated by Renée and exasperated by the children, whom she found both tedious and exhausting. When the smallest one overturned a pitcher of milk, she struck him. Renée’s affronted silence lasted for days.

The rains fell without ceasing. In its mud hole the fort rotted from the foundations up, its wooden bastions crumbling beneath the weight of its cannon. Bienville had brokered an uneasy alliance between the Choctaw and the Chickasaw in which both nations pledged their friendship to the French, and the chiefs of the two nations had both spent some part of the winter in Mobile. It did not prevent the English from stirring up trouble. If they succeeded in provoking the Chickasaw to attack, the town would have precious little hope of holding out against them.

Then, in a violent storm that lasted three days, the half-built church was flooded, the altar and makeshift pews smashed to sticks, and the single field of Indian corn that the commandant had prevailed upon the settlers to plant was destroyed. Worst of all, the warehouse was ravaged. There had been no ships from France since the
Aigle
, and even before the rains goods of every kind had been in perilously short supply. By the time the tempest blew itself out, there was almost nothing left.

Miserable, impoverished and fearful, the townspeople complained bitterly. The locksmith Le Caën, with several other tradesmen, led a delegation to the commandant to persuade him to move the town to the mouth of the river. There was, they declared angrily, no worse possible place for a settlement than this sodden swamp in the middle of the woods.

Bienville listened to their exhortations and sent them away.

The rains were still falling when Jean-Claude’s expedition returned with food and with slaves. There was not enough of either. The expedition remained in the town for three days while their cargo was recorded and stored in makeshift huts erected in the garrison high on the bluff, and the slaves were quickly sold to those settlers of the town who could afford them. Then, once again, Jean-Claude and his guides ventured north.

And still the rains did not cease. As the floods rose, tongues soured and rumours bobbed like logs on the surface of the scummy water. Renée declared bitterly that the commandant was a pig, too proud and too stubborn to admit the mistake made by his brother in situating the town in a swamp. Others went further. Some said that Bienville kept the settlement in Mobile solely because it was a good distance from the harbour at Massacre Island and the convoluted business of transporting cargo between the two made it easier for his agents to abscond with stolen goods; others claimed that he invented the threat of an English ambush simply to divert attention from his own incompetence. But though there were threats of reports to the Minister of the Marine and even of formal complaints to the King, nothing was done. No ships came and there was no paper for letters. For all the notice paid to them by the mother country, the drowned lands of Louisiana might have been sluiced from the surface of the earth.

It was almost June when the skies cleared and the waters slunk back to their summer positions on the margins of the settlement. Renée and her family returned to their home and made what repairs they could manage. During the sweltering months of summer, a crew of twenty slick-skinned Apalache natives toiled against the white-hot sky, cutting and dressing timbers for a large stockade and rebuilding the bastions that supported the cannon. That summer six soldiers died from the fever.

The garrison for all of Louisiana now numbered fewer than sixty men.

For most of that summer, Jean-Claude was away from Mobile. In their two lines in the cabin on rue d’Iberville the savage children chanted French words, making music from everyday phrases. One day, when they were gone, Elisabeth pulled her trunk from its place under the bed. The leather was mildewed, the lock rusted shut. She ran her fingers over its rough mouth. Then she pushed it back out of sight. The commandant did not approve of teaching savages to read or write. He thought book learning among slaves not only unnecessary but hazardous. But when the children came for their lesson two days later, she waited as they chorused their greetings and then she held up her hand.

‘Today,’ she said, ‘I have a different lesson for you.’

The children waited. Elisabeth took a breath. Then she sat before them, her hands in her lap, and she began to tell them the tale of the
Odyssey
. She spoke of Telemachus, whose father was missing, and of his mother Penelope, surrounded by young men who endeavoured to persuade her to accept her husband’s disappearance and to marry one of them. The story came awkwardly at first, its details half forgotten, but as she continued Elisabeth found that Homer’s verses returned to settle on her tongue, their song familiar in her mouth. The children gazed at her, their eyes wide. She knew they did not understand her. When she was finished they were silent. Then, shyly, they filed away, leaving Elisabeth sitting alone in the cabin. She sat there for a long time as the darkness settled about her and the words hummed inside her like bees.

The next time she taught them words that would be useful in the fields: hoe, till, machete.

It was almost August when Jean-Claude returned. He was burned dark by the sun, the beard mossy on his chin. It was only when she hastened to embrace him that she saw the slave. Bare-headed, with long black hair that fell almost to her knees, she waited in the lane, her eyes set demurely upon the ground. She wore a long white linen dress of mulberry bark that skimmed her hips and her high, round breasts, and the skin on her face and arms was smooth and coppery-brown. She was very young.