The Pelican Bride (30 page)

“I’m certain of it.” Julien kept his voice as somber as a gallows. “
Cherie
, you must help your sister. You must retrieve that note and give it to me for safe-keeping.”

“But I don’t think I could—”

“My darling, if you love Ginette, you’ll do whatever you must to protect her from herself.”

Aimée continued to gnaw at her lip in silence. Finally she said slowly, “I suppose . . . I suppose I could try.”

Julien squeezed her waist. “I know you can do it.”

The stentorian snores emanating from the other side of the campfire fairly shook the ground beneath Mathieu’s knees as he prayed, making him long for some cotton wadding with which to plug his ears. Surgeon-Major Barraud’s skills as a physician might be in question, but there was no doubt of his ability to imbibe
copious amounts of corn liquor and maintain his grip on this mortal coil. Saucier and Guillory were sound asleep as well, full of roasted turkey and flatbread.

Tristan had gone into the Koasati village, leaving his younger brother in somewhat sullen command of the remaining peace party. Marc-Antoine had rolled himself into a defensive knot as far from the others as he could get, and still feel the warmth of the fire. He had a good heart, no doubt, and seemed to be no more selfish than most men, but he was not going to be pleased when Mathieu took his best friend and mentor away for good.

But, dear God, King Louis needed men of wisdom, intellect, and integrity surrounding him in court. Otherwise, the factions that corroded the nation from the inside must continue to work their diabolical schemes, until there would be no one left to withstand the King’s hedonistic spiral into destruction.

In thoughts from the visions of the night, when
deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me, and
trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
Still on his knees, Mathieu reeled, Job’s words piercing his anguished spirit, as he strove to hear God’s voice above the clamor of his own weariness.
A spirit passed before
my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. There
was silence, and I heard a voice saying, Shall mortal
man be more just than God? shall a man be
more pure than his maker?

He opened his eyes and could swear the same spirit crossed his vision. Terrified, he flattened himself against the ground. Was it too much to ask that France be rescued from the consequences of human weakness? Was there no patriot strong enough to halt the inexorable march of the Church’s corrupting influence?

He raised his head in shocked denial.
Me? Never me, Father—

The shadow of his imagination became a solid form, hellishly distorted behind the campfire. Another followed, arm raised to brandish a flashing knife, and a third embellished with a trembling cockscomb of turkey feathers. The first two silently swooped upon
the Frenchmen sleeping on the opposite side of the fire—Guillory and Saucier never moved, though their snores abruptly ceased.

Frozen in horror, Mathieu knew that Barraud and Marc-Antoine Lanier would be next. He could save them, if he moved, if he shouted, if he did
something
.

Just as the third attacker raised his knife to drive it into Barraud’s sleeping form, Mathieu screamed. The sleeper jerked, rolled into the fire, and sat up with a startled grunt. His attacker moved behind him, grabbed him by the hair, jerked his head backward, and swiftly lowered the blade in his hand.

That was all he saw before a wrenching, scalding pain exploded in his head.

It was over before Nika could do more than gasp in horror. When she had earlier come upon Mitannu and his men, a pheasant had flown out of the underbrush, diverting her husband’s attention from her hiding place above the creek. It had been easy to follow the disguised Mobilians as they slipped through the forest. Towering in helpless fear, she had watched them butcher all five Frenchmen, including the priest. He had screamed like a wildcat just before Mitannu, who carried a musket, had shot him.

Murdered him, the man of God, with deliberate, cold violence, then melted away into the forest with his men.

The magnitude of her husband’s savagery sank in. Her body went into an earthquake of fear as she crouched inside a dense copse of shrubs on a rise not five yards from the scene of carnage. Nausea rose, but she held it back lest the noise bring the attackers down on her. She didn’t know where or how far they’d gone or if they would return. All she knew was a terror that overcame all earlier determination to go forward with courage.

She didn’t know how long she cowered there on hands and knees, arms wrapped around her head, before a faint groan pen
etrated her stupor of fear. She cringed into a smaller ball. What if Mitannu had returned?

Then she heard it again and realized it was a moan of pain, coming from the campsite below.

Someone was still alive down there.

She lowered her arms and lifted her head, her body still rigid. The forest around her was quiet, even the wildlife still, perhaps in sympathy with the death scene below. She waited, listening for any sense that Mitannu might be watching nearby. Then she realized that he would not do that. He was so arrogant that he would assume he had completed his work.

Moving like a woman thrice her age, she crawled through the brush, wincing at every rustle of leaves under her hands and knees. Closer, she became aware of the labored breathing of whoever lay wounded near the smoldering fire. Close enough to see the outline of the still figure, she waited another count of one hundred, tried to decide who it was. Not the priest in his black robe and white collar; she recognized his body, fallen where he had been praying on his knees before the attack. This man, sprawled on his back, was tall, much taller than the priest, dressed in buckskin breeches and boots, and a white full-sleeved shirt marred at the shoulder by a large dark-brown stain.

Blood. Much blood. Too much blood for the man to be alive, yet his chest continued to rise and fall in shallow gasps, the intermittent groan escaping into the night. How was this possible?

She crept closer, eyes darting side to side in fear of the return of the enemy.

All was quiet. She ventured close enough to distinguish the man’s features by the light of the small fire. He was young, his hair dark and curly, unmarred by gray, his fine beard neatly trimmed. His eyebrows slanted wickedly above deep eye sockets and high cheekbones.

She fell to her knees beside him.
“Mah-Kah-Twah!”
she whispered.

17

T
ristan could hardly keep his eyes open, and his entire chest stung as if a hundred wasps had attacked in the night. Yawning, he staggered through the forest, down the gradual slope from the Koasati village situated about a mile from the riverbank where the rest of his party had camped for the night.

The Indians had feasted him, dancing madly to drums and feathered reed instruments, the headmen dressed head to toe in animal skins topped by skeletal horned masks. The dance of the young men became wilder even than their elders, who with whips and rods flagellated each boy as he passed until the blood ran.
Run, young warrior! Dance with courage as did our heroes of old!
Dance and sing to prove your strength!

Tristan had seen the ritual before and found it bizarre—but less so than some of the religious ceremonies of his own people. His mind went inexorably to the welts on the soft, fragrant skin of his wife’s back. He would find the man who did that to her and make him pay. It was certain.

His hosts wound down the peace celebration sometime toward morning, retiring to their thatched wattle-and-daub houses to sleep off the excesses of food, tobacco, and alcohol. Tristan, mercifully left
to his own devices, had rolled himself in a borrowed blanket beside a dying fire to doze for a couple of hours until daylight. Nobody stirred when he rose, gathered his belongings, and headed for camp.

Ruefully he rubbed his burning skin through the buckskin shirt. Allowing the headman to tattoo a series of snakes from shoulder to shoulder across his chest had seemed like a good idea at the time. Bienville and Iberville both had endured similar rituals in early congresses with Indians of the lower Mississippi region. He didn’t remember either of his superiors mentioning the significant pain that accompanied the deposit of charcoal under the skin with fish bones.

Presumably the sting would eventually go away as the lacerated skin healed. At least it was keeping him awake and on his feet.

By the time the trees began to thin near the juncture of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, dawn had brought enough light that he could see several yards ahead. It occurred to him that he should be able to hear morning noises from the campsite. But all was still, except for the twitter of birds awakening and small animals rustling in the pines and oaks overhead and in the underbrush. His companions had apparently drunk deep and slept heavily.

He stopped, frowning. His brother was the rare soldier who refused to consume hard liquor when on duty. He at least should have nursed the fire back to life by now.

Not a wisp of smoke drifted from camp.

Tristan began to run. Ignoring the pain across his chest, blood throbbing through his veins, he zigzagged around trees, his shoulder hitting one hard enough to stagger him. Regaining his balance, he threw himself forward.

He reached the camp. Stopped in an agony of despair. The buzzards had already arrived.

The first soft fingers of morning were seeping through the thatching above her bed when Geneviève wearily rose and dressed in the
Indian print robe that Tristan had admired the day of their wedding. As she brushed and replaited her hair and washed her face, she tried to forget the vivid nightmare that had awakened her hours earlier.

It was not the first time she had dreamed of the savage who had invaded the kitchen in the fort, on the day Tristan had bought her bread. But this time the Indian had not been content to skulk off with a loaf of bread and a handful of hominy. He had flung his knife at Tristan’s head and wrapped the string of scalps around Father Mathieu’s neck, choking him. Once she dragged herself awake, heart pounding and face buried in the pillow, she’d lain curled on her side, feverishly praying—oddly enough, not for Tristan but for Mathieu. She had never been so glad to find that a dream was just that—a creation of her own anxiety.

As she hurried down the stairs to the kitchen, she prayed for Tristan’s and Nika’s safe travel and for successful delivery of her message. But once she arrived in her domain, there was so much to do, with nobody to help her, that all other anxiety fled. Aimée’s mutiny hurt in so many ways. Her sister might be a petulant assistant, oftentimes slow to obey, but at least Geneviève didn’t have to explain in detail how she wanted things done. Their father had been a patient teacher, and their mother a thorough housekeeper. Aimée might not
like
housework or baking, but at least she knew how.

Then yesterday had ruined everything.

As she lit a piece of kindling and laid it under the firewood in the fireplace to catch, Geneviève wondered if there was anything she could have done to avert Aimée’s unreasonable jealousy over her trip to the Mobile village with Dufresne. The whole thing was maddening. Why would she, a woman married to Tristan Lanier, try to seduce—or let herself be seduced by, for that matter—a red-haired game-cock like Julien Dufresne?