The Pelican Bride (5 page)

Duty discharged, Julien called his men to order and bid the women adieu. He caught the eye of Mademoiselle Aimée and smiled, pleased when she blushed and looked away. Clearly he had established himself as a man of importance and authority.

“To the munitions house, boys,” he said curtly. “Clean weapons and rearm, then report to mess.” Laying a hand on his sword hilt, he executed a smart about-face and headed toward the fort without a backward look at the blonde beauty.

A bit of inattention would do her good.

M
OBILE
VILLAGE
,
TWELVE
MILES
NORTHEAST
OF
F
ORT
L
OUIS

The village was quiet this afternoon. Nika sat on the floor of her chickee with Chazeh’s sweaty little head in her lap. He had been running a high fever since the day before, and she did not want him out in the sun. The others were all three miles away at Little Cedar creek; the women would be washing their few belongings—clothing, cooking utensils, and pots—while the children swam and splashed one another, practicing shallow dives off the natural bridge formed by a couple of felled water oaks. Chazeh’s twin, Tonaw, had begged to go swimming with his cousin Undin, and Nika had gratefully agreed. It was hard enough to keep an active little boy cool and still without his much more aggressive brother wreaking havoc unsupervised.

Maybe she should have taken Chazeh to the creek after all. Its sandy bank was shaded by scrubby overhanging vegetation, and sometimes a waft of breeze penetrated the dense forest. She could have let him lie with his little brown feet in the icy water and giggle at the minnows nibbling his toes.

But Nika’s sister-in-law Kumala, mother of the irrepressible Undin, would ask questions.
Why are
you wearing that hot dress on a day like today, Nika? Why don’t you leave Chazeh with me for
a few minutes and go swimming? What was Mitannu shouting
about last night?

The first two questions had a simple answer, but not one she wished to share with her friend. How Kumala and Mitannu could have come from the same family mystified Nika. Maybe it was simply the difference between male and female: Kumala with her wide smile and incessant talking, interested in everything and everyone, full of advice and recipes and gossip; Mitannu, suspicious of Nika, impatient with the boys and, as the chieftain’s son, certain of his superiority over everyone else. He was the best hunter for miles around; thus he was always dressed in beautiful leather breechclout and leggings covered with Nika’s fine beadwork, with expensive bells and shells woven into his long hair.

How could she have thought marrying him would rescue her from her dilemma? Yes, her father would have been angry. Perhaps would have beaten her. And she had dreaded disappointing her mother. But nothing could have been worse than almost five years of tiptoeing around Mitannu’s temper. Five years of silence.

Chazeh coughed, a thin, rattling sound, and opened his eyes. “Mama, I’m thirsty.”

“All right.” She reached for a skin of water and trickled a little onto his lips. It was hot inside the chickee, and a fly buzzed with obnoxious busyness against the thatched wall.

Chazeh licked the water off his lips, sighed, and closed his eyes again.

Was his skin the faintest bit yellow? She brushed her thumb over his cheekbone, then his eye socket. The older he and his brother got, the more defined those bones grew. It was a wonder Mitannu hadn’t noticed.

She flexed her aching shoulder. Maybe he
had
noticed.

If she had taken off her dress to swim, everyone would have seen, Kumala would have berated her brother when next she saw him, and his resultant anger would have been worse than last night. No. No more swimming until the bruise followed its colorful cycle of purple, black, green, and yellow.

She poured a little water into her hand and sprinkled it over her son’s forehead, where the fever burned hottest, a sort of motherly baptism. The thought made her smile. Mitannu had refused to have the boys baptized when the priest named Father Al-Bair had visited in the spring. Mitannu didn’t believe in the Frenchmen’s crazy Jesus-God as his father did. Nika wanted to believe, but five years of praying to whatever God would listen had done little for her and her two babies.

So she had found another way, and soon she would have enough
sous
to leave for good. She wouldn’t get very far now, on the coins hidden in her woman bag. Soon, though. She would miss Kumala and the other women, but she was going to take the boys away from here before it was too late.

Soon.

Tristan waited just inside the door as Marc-Antoine approached his superior officer. Bienville sat hunched, frowning, over a leather-bound book of lading lying open upon the rough table. The commander, though closer in age to Marc-Antoine, had once been Tristan’s peer. But Tristan’s resignation of his commission in the French army had resulted in the rather uncomfortable situation that Bienville hardly seemed to know how to treat Tristan anymore.

At the sound of Marc-Antoine’s boots upon the wooden floor, Bienville looked up. “Lanier. The women have arrived?”

Marc-Antoine nodded. “The last of them are climbing up the bluff. Don’t you want to come out to welcome them?”

Bienville grimaced. “Of course. I was just—” He caught sight of Tristan. “Ah. The
other
Lanier. What brings you here? I wouldn’t have thought you interested in French skirts. Your taste has always run to darker meat.”

Tristan felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. “Your choice of phrasing, as always, Commander, is so refined.” He met his brother’s alarmed gaze with a shrug. “But, no, as you say, French skirts are not in my purview. I bring news from the upper river.”

Bienville rose carefully, one hand pressed to his abdomen, indicating some injury. “And how would you know what’s going on upriver?”

“As you well know, I maintain relationships with Sholani’s people. My sources of information don’t depend on kegs of ale.”

Bienville scowled at Tristan for a moment. “If you say so.” He fell back into his chair, grimacing.

“Is the stomach cyst still bothering you, sir?” Marc-Antoine took a worried step toward the commander.

Bienville stopped him with a raised hand. “The pain comes and goes. I can stand it. What is important enough to bring you two in to interrupt me on the most auspicious day the colony has enjoyed in months?”

The arrogant swine. Tristan figured he should take his information back to his plantation and let Bienville fend for himself. But that would leave his own brother vulnerable as well—not to mention the women who had just arrived at the settlement. He reined in his impatience. “The British recently sent agents to the Koroa village and bought peace with them.”

“
Bought
peace? The Koroa aren’t stupid enough to believe the
English will honor friendship sold at the price of a few beads and trinkets.”

Tristan refrained from pointing out the irony of that statement. “It’s more than trinkets. The Koroa are now armed with muskets and powder. If they can defend themselves against slave-takers and hunt meat for themselves, they’ll become aggressive against our own Mobile and Alabama villages.” He glanced at Marc-Antoine.
Jump in
here anytime, brother.

Marc-Antoine visibly gathered himself. “And, Commander, it seems the British have promised them more. More bread, more arms, and yes, more trinkets—if the Koroa will break trade relations with us.”

Bienville slammed a hand on the table. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“Yes. They would.” Tristan no longer chafed under the hotheaded commander’s authority, obliged to walk the thin line between obedience and truth. “The Koroa are just restless and bored enough to listen to those redcoat mercenaries. We have to do something.”

Bienville’s lip curled. “If you think I’ll authorize emptying our warehouse and arsenal in some insane bribery competition—”

“No such thing.” Tristan inclined his head toward his brother. “I suggest you use your biggest asset to create a peaceful coalition among the Koroa, the Choctaw, and the Chickasaw.”

There was a moment of stunned silence before Bienville sputtered, “You think we can forge peace among three of the most contentious tribes in New France?”

Tristan nodded. “Send Marc-Antoine and let him take along a priest as a sign of good faith—but show strength with a small armed contingent.”

Marc-Antoine was savvy enough to address his commander with respect. “What do you think, sir? We’ve got to find some way to control the influence of the British and keep them out of our territory.”

Bienville rubbed his midsection. “I can’t spare you. You’re my best interpreter.”

“Sir, you speak the languages almost as well as I do now.” Marc-Antoine smiled. “You don’t need an interpreter.”

Tristan nodded. “Besides, I can’t believe you’d expose those young women to attack and do nothing to prevent it.” He knew he risked piquing Bienville’s notorious stubborn streak, but the time for silence had passed.

“It could work.” Bienville struggled to his feet again. “But for now, as you say, I must welcome our arrivals.” Sweating with the obvious effort to hide his pain, he glowered at Tristan. “The two of you keep your brilliant plan to yourselves until I determine if I can spare enough men to accompany the expedition.” He skewered Marc-Antoine with a look. “Is that clear?”

Bienville had conceded more than expected. Marc-Antoine responded with a salute, while Tristan simply nodded. He could depend on his brother’s genius for good-natured common sense. The commander would come around—hopefully sooner than later.

4

T
he fort’s tiny chapel, in which Élisabeth le Pinteaux was joined by rite of holy matrimony to locksmith Paul Loisel, reminded Geneviève of nothing so much as a chicken coop riding upon a set of stumps. Constructed of pine slats pegged together with wooden dowels, minimally protected from the weather by a soggy thatched roof, and subject to marauding mosquitoes and roaches through its uncovered doors and windows, the little room was barely big enough to hold the bridal couple and Father Henri, plus a handful of witnesses roosting upon overturned boxes like so many brooding hens.

Two days after their arrival at the fort, Geneviève sat in a place of honor near the front, along with Aimée and six other young women sufficiently recovered from the fever. She felt like the heroine of some macabre miracle play. A scant twenty-four hours ago, funeral rites for her friend Louise Lefevre had been conducted in this very building. Poor Louise had endured that miserable journey in hopes of becoming a bride, only to succumb to the fever yesterday morning. The funeral mass and burial had been conducted in such brisk, almost matter-of-fact fashion, by fat Father Henri,
that Geneviève concluded that survival in this place must be more the exception than the norm.

Dear God, your purposes are so very strange. What if it had been me they’d hammered into
that coffin and lowered into the marshy ground? What would
have become of my sister?

Geneviève glanced at Aimée, seated to her left, hands clasped in her lap, feet tucked under the ragged hem of her dress. Her blue eyes were trained on the bridal couple, her lips moving in unison with every word of the priest’s reading. Perhaps she imagined the day she would take a husband and become mistress of her own home.

Perhaps they
all
did. Geneviève felt the eyes of the male congregants burning into the back of her head. In fact, her every move seemed strange and awkward, since it was guaranteed to draw attention. It was a mortifying sensation.

Her glance cut to the other end of the pew. Françoise Dubonnier, self-appointed “governess superior,” clearly entertained no such qualms. The lovely spinster’s auburn hair, dressed with stacks of curls and ribbons arranged over a tall wire frame, blocked the view of the ceremony for anyone unfortunate enough to be seated behind her. A tiny, heart-shaped patch kissed the corner of her lips with seductive intent.