Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (13 page)

She drew in her breath as a sudden thought struck her. Fine words, but how did they apply to herself? Because of the hurt she had been dealt in the past, she had this morning taken her own minor vengeance and that against a man who refused to defend himself. He had deserved it, perhaps, for the way in which he had compelled her to share his bed, but after his forbearance when he had discovered her revulsion for lovemaking, had it not been a little unworthy?

She had taken unfair advantage of Reynaud Chavalier. Remorse, unwanted and unfamiliar, crept in upon her, a feeling that had been a vague disturbance in the back of her mind all day. The temptation he had presented with his demands that she caress him had been irresistible, but that was no excuse. She had known that he would not retaliate. He had given his word and she trusted him to keep it.

Trust. It was a strange word to apply to the half-breed with his barbaric dress, to the man who had demanded her favors as a right, who had forced her each night to sleep beside him and used blackmail of a most heartless kind to bend her to his will. And yet it was undeniable that she did trust him to keep the vow he had made. She believed implicitly that he would not touch her, had no fear that he would raise a hand against her in anger.

She had no fear.

Staring into the night, Elise examined that curious fact. It was not in her nature to fear many things, of course; thunderstorms and snakes, mice and crawling insects had never held any terrors for her. Her one secret terror, formed by the past few years, had been in being held by a man, subjected to his greater strength and unbridled desires. She had fought it, had fought the men who would treat her so, but it had always been there. With Reynaud Chavalier, it was gone. He had banished it with a few words and with the iron control that governed his every action, a control that had allowed her to accept his word and to depend on it.

Elise had a code that she lived by. It had evolved over the past three years since her husband had died, three years in which she had had to deal with men in a man’s world. The basic premise was fairness. In the produce of her farm, she had given good measure and expected the same in return. She had paid a reasonable price without argument for what she bought, but refused to set down a
piastre
more. She sold only healthy animals from her excess stock and any who tried to put a diseased beast off on her received short shrift. When she made a bargain, she kept it, and she expected others to do the same.

She felt now that she had not kept faith with the letter of her bargain with Reynaud. Her code required compensation in some form. That did not mean that she must confess her fault or give recompense in land. It would be enough that she performed some service for him, a just return, even if only she knew the reason for it.

Where was he? While she had sat thinking, St. Amant and Henri had banked the fire and retreated to their shelters. She knew that Reynaud always made a circuit of their camp before seeking his bed; perhaps that was what he was doing now. It was also possible that he was down at the bayou performing his nightly ablutions.

She got to her feet, stretching cramped muscles. She could hear Pascal snoring and the low moans that Madame Doucet made in her sleep. With the dying of the fire, the moonlight seemed brighter, a white light that washed the color from the night, leaving a landscape of black and silver gray. The woods around her were quieter now, with only a faint, almost secretive rattle caused by falling leaves and the foraging of small nocturnal animals. Then faintly the splash of water came to her.

Without conscious thought she moved toward the sound, skirting the embers of the fire and threading through the trees. She saw first the gleam of moonlight on the bayou. So slow moving was the stream that it seemed still, reflecting the starlit sky and the shafting path of the moon. The trees grew to the edge, hanging over it to make a skirt of black shadow. The water did not appear to be deep, though the banks were high, a mark of the greater flow of the winter and spring rains. It was, however, the glittering streaks, which were the arms of a fast-moving swimmer, that caught and held her attention. Smiling a little in satisfaction that she had found Reynaud, she moved to the water’s edge.

Her approach startled a frog and it plopped into the water. Reynaud rolled on his side, looking toward the sound. He saw her there in the shadows and lifted a hand, then began to swim toward her with strong, sure strokes.

“Is something wrong?” he called as he came near.

“No, no, I just … wondered where you were.”

Not far from where she stood was a slanting shelf in the bank that angled down to the water, a natural path where animals made their way to the water to drink. He started toward it, flinging back his wet hair as he struck bottom and rose to his feet. The copper of his wet skin was silvered by the light of the moon, sculpted in bold angles and hollows. It turned him from a man into a pagan deity, remote, savage, splendid in his nakedness.

He was naked! She had not thought — she had expected he would be wearing his breechclout at least. She looked away and heard his low laugh. Still, from the corner of her eyes, she saw his springing bound as he came up the bank, saw him bend to pick up the scant squares of cloth that made up a major part of his wardrobe. She had seen him unclothed before, and her husband also, of course, though Vincent had been modest, and with reason, of his barrel shape and stocky legs. Regardless, she felt easier when Reynaud had fastened his breechclout around him.

“Don’t you find it cold?” she asked, rushing into speech before he could comment. “I mean, with the night so cool and your skin wet?”

“No. The exercise is warming and I’m used to it.”

“I believe the Natchez make a great to-do about bathing.”

“More so than the French with their powder and perfume and tight velvet coats.”

She was reminded forcibly once more of the insult she had given him. The words tight, abrupt, she said, “I must apologize for what I said — that night at the commandant’s house. I didn’t mean it, at least not in the way it sounded. And — and I know it isn’t true.”

“A magnificent gesture. I accept it.”

The mockery in his tone was not lost upon her. She turned toward him. “Don’t you believe me?”

He moved his shoulders in a shrug. “It just strikes me that I am sorrier now than you are.”

“I doubt that,” she answered, an unspoken acknowledgment that if she had never made light of him then neither of them would be in their present situation. “But when you speak of velvet, I trust you are not thinking of my habit? I am heartily sick of it, but have no alternative.”

“You could always dress in the costume of the Natchez women.”

“Thank you, no.” The women of the Natchez wore no more than a square of woven material wrapped around their lower body and knotted on one hip, leaving their breasts bare. For warmth during this season, they swung a short cape of woven cloth or fur around them.

He moved to lean with one shoulder against a tree beside her. “It would give you ease of movement and be most becoming. I could make one for you from what we have with us.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Suit yourself.”

It was a curious thing how itchy her habit had become since they had begun talking. The need to take it off and never look at it again was strong, but she managed to disregard it. “Besides, though the costumes of your women may be comfortable, I don’t know what keeps them, or the men either, from freezing to death.”

“It can get a little drafty at times,” he said with humor threading his tone, “but the weather is seldom severe and, as with bathing, you get used to it.”

“The apparel of the Natchez is even more meager than that of other tribes, I think?”

“A little, perhaps. It may be a matter of tradition. They came here years ago from farther south.”

“Did they?” she asked, her tone distracted as she watched water drip from his hair and gather in the hollow of his collarbone before trickling in a silver runnel down his chest.

“The Natchez are different from the Choctaws or Chickasaws. It’s a difference you can see in their greater height, their broader foreheads, and especially in then customs. They are the last of what was once a tribe many thousand strong who, like themselves, built and lived on great mounds of earth. According to the ancient words of the tribe, kept by the wisest men, they came from the south, from the lands now claimed by Spain. They are of the same blood as the old mound builders, but arrived much later, at the time the older ones were dying out, between two and three hundred years ago as near as I can determine.”

Elise frowned. “If I remember the teachings of the good sisters concerning the Spanish excursions, that would have been near the time the adventurer Cortez conquered the Aztecs.”

“The Natchez claim to be old enemies of a great tribe with whom they fought many battles. Then one day white men came, as the legends had foretold that they would, moving over the water in ‘houses’ of wood. The Natchez became allies of the white men against their old foes. But when their enemies were defeated and their leaders dead, the white men turned on the Natchez. They fled, finally coming to rest here. There being no stones to use to build their ceremonial pyramids, they mounded up earth instead, as had their predecessors. Whether the story is true or not, I can’t say, for the ancients give no names to the white men who came or to their Indian enemies.”

“And were the white men indeed the followers of Cortez?”

“Some think they were. Others believe they were the soldiers who came with the Spaniard de Soto two centuries ago and that the Indians the Natchez fought were the forest tribes who hunted these lands. The latter story doesn’t explain the migration legend, however, nor does it tell why the Natchez build their mounds and worship the sun today, long after such practices have died out in the Mississippi valley.”

“The Natchez are different, yes,” Elise mused. “They worship one supreme being whom they embody in the sun, they have a hereditary ruler, and they trace their succession, most realistically, through the female line, thereby allowing women importance. They are eloquent in speech, always treat guests with honor, and are uniformly gentle with children. They are, in short, more civilized than other tribes and many Europeans. And yet they also strangle the wives and servants of their ruler, the Great Sun, on his death, torture and kill captives, and, when provoked, rise and massacre hundreds.”

He was quiet a moment. “You have taken the time to learn something of my mother’s people, I see.”

“It would have been difficult not to, living so close.”

“Others have managed not to learn.”

“I was interested. There was much to admire, until — until St. Andrew’s Eve.”

“There still is, though who’s to say for how long?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you doubt that the French will retaliate with overwhelming force? Or that the other tribes who were to join the Natchez, being balked of their share of the spoils by an error, will join the French as allies?

“I suppose so.”

They were quiet. Elise reached up to scratch a small itch on her neck at the opening of her habit jacket.

“If you would like to take advantage of the water,” he said, his voice laced with quiet humor, “I will stand as your guard.”

“I can’t swim.”

“There’s no need. If you stay near the bank it will not be over your head.”

The lure of cleanliness, freshness was overpowering. Ordinarily she might not have been so aware of the need; there were people she knew who claimed never to have bathed and who were vociferous in their opinion that the Indian habit was the reason for the high rate of infant mortality among them and the cause of their succumbing in such numbers to mild diseases such as measles. She herself could not bear grime and filled a tub for a complete bath while at home at least twice a week, more often during the summer. But now it was Reynaud’s daily ritual, and her own stupid insult of him, that made her aware of her own ripeness.

“You must turn your back,” she said finally.

“As you will.”

He swung, stepping away a few paces. She stared at his broad form in mistrust for a long moment, then began hurriedly to strip off her habit. Dropping it to the matted leaves that covered the ground and retaining her shift, she hastened down the bank and splashed out into the water.

She drew in her breath with a sound of shock. “It’s c-cold!”

“Never mind,” he said over his shoulder, “you’ll—”

“Get used to it, I know!”

Elise had the uncomfortable feeling that he was laughing at her, but she refused to look at him to find out. Clenching her teeth to prevent their chattering, she waded deeper. After a moment, she discovered that the water, though by no means warm, was not as cool as the air above it. If she moved even farther out, to a point where she could submerge her shoulders, it might even be bearable. Stepping gingerly on the mud bottom with its rotted sticks and limbs, she followed that impulse.

“Wait,” he called, “I forgot to give you the soap root!”

“I don’t need it!”

“Yes, you do. I’ll bring it.”

She flung a quick look over her shoulder in time to see him chop at something in his hand, then lay his knife aside with his other clothes. With one hand, he released his breechclout and let it fall before stepping into the water. She slewed around, backing away. “Stop. Go back.”