22

Ysabeau was singing that monotonous song again. “Raindrop, raindrop, you wet the tip of my little nose. Fall down, fall down on the road. Wet is the road, and wet is my nose.”

She wouldn’t stop singing. And the rain wasn’t going away either.

Geneviève sat cross-legged upon her cot with nothing to do but to watch a growing stream rush under the floor slats of the cell. She didn’t have her Bible or her journal. She didn’t have her tatting. She didn’t have corn to grind. All she had were her anxious thoughts and prayers.

And if the rain didn’t stop soon, more than the tip of her nose was going to be wet. She wondered if Noah’s wife had looked over the side of the grounded ark, watching the waters rise and hoping her husband had heard God’s instructions correctly. She wondered if the guardhouse would float. She wished she’d learned to swim.

She was in a cage. Like a canary in a rich woman’s house. With another canary who knew only one sad song.

Why had they locked her up? Did they think she would run away? Where would she have gone? What harm had she done, after all? She had written a letter to Jean Cavalier through Pastor Elie Prioleau, but all it said was that she was settling in well among the Catholics (they weren’t all papist heathens), the Indians she had met were friendly, and oh, by the way, I married a man who thinks I’m beautiful.

But none of that mattered becasue it was a crime to communicate with a French rebel, however innocently.

Which made her think of Julien Dufresne, whom she had been trying to push out of her thoughts because he made them so angry and bitter. He was one of the self-righteous papist heathens she had been taught to fear and distrust. The Bible said that one should test the fruit of a life to determine whether they were of the true faith. She had seen no evidence that Dufresne had committed any part of his life to serving God. He served only himself, and he was dangerous as a roaring lion looking around for a tender lamb to devour.

She must get out of here, before he ruined her little sister.

It had been hours since young Foussé had shut her in and then walked away. Nobody had bothered to guard her and Ysabeau. She had called and called for a drink of water, but nobody answered. She had slept a little, but her sleep had been restless and uncomfortable. Waking to the sound of Ysabeau’s eerie voice, she’d sat up and started measuring the distance between the water under the guardhouse and the floor.

The floor was now wet on top. The cell was going to flood.

“Ysabeau!” She tried not to sound frightened. “Can you see water beneath your cell?”

“Wet is the road, and wet is my nose.”

“Listen to me! Stop singing and look at the floor.”

To her surprise, the song halted. There was a wattle-and-daub wall between the two cells, so she couldn’t see Ysabeau’s movements, but she heard a faint rustling as Ysabeau got off her cot, then a patter of bare feet against the floor.

“Geneviève, the floor is wet!”

“Ysette, I think they’ve forgotten us. We have to get out before the building floods.” Ysabeau might not even be lucid, but maybe if both of them shouted for help, someone would come.

“Help!” Ysabeau shrieked. “Someone open the door!”

Geneviève went to the bars of the cell and joined her shouts and screams until she was hoarse. Even should someone walk past, the rain pounded outside like the roar of a waterfall. Thunder boomed with deafening anger. Into the looming darkness lightning crackled, allowing glimpses of the water which now covered the entire floor, drenching Geneviève’s moccasins and reaching the bottom of her skirt.

She sloshed over to the wall between the cells and laid her palm on it. The lumpy oyster-shell-and-mud texture was damp. And soft. She pushed on it, felt it give, then pushed harder. It cracked. Slamming the heel of her hand against the wall with all her strength, she felt it give way, falling in chunks into the other room.

“Ysabeau! Come here! The wall is soft enough to break down. At least we can be together!”

There was no answer. Geneviève waited until the next flash of lightning and peered through the hole she had made.

Ysabeau sat on her cot, arms wrapped around her knees. When lightning lit the cell again, Ysabeau’s wide eyes gleamed like a cat’s. “No one’s coming,” she said flatly. “We’re going to die.”

Marc-Antoine was not going to die. He would not allow it.

Tristan and the Indian boys had carried his brother’s litter twenty miles in driving wind and rain with lightning flashing like bolts of fire flung from the heavens. Nika had gone ahead of them to search out the safest trails, dodging swollen creeks and flooded swampland. Then she would circle back and guide them through.

By the time they reached the stockade, evening blanketed the wooded terrain with sluggish, funereal darkness. The entire party dragged themselves forward on strength of will alone. As they stopped before the big oaken gates, intermittent flashes of lightning threw the pickets of the stockade into glaring relief as if the teeth of hell waited to swallow them all. After shouting for the sentry, Tristan glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of his brother’s face, wet and twisted in pain. Marc-Antoine twitched about, eyes closed, playing out some feverish dream, muttering nonsense about books and pictures, paintings and the Madonna’s child. Perhaps he thought he had already died and faced heaven’s gates.

He would give the sentry another minute or two before he ordered his native companions to hack down the gate with their hatchets. Part of him hoped there would no longer be anyone here. Bienville should have taken the inhabitants of the settlement, soldiers and all, and moved them to higher ground, as Tristan had suggested before he left. The fort itself sat on high ground, but the river had swollen outside its bounds, even on this bluff.

He had regretted his decision to leave Geneviève, more with every step. With Marc-Antoine safely within his care once more, her fate became uppermost in his mind.

He signaled to the Indians that he wanted to rest Marc-Antoine’s litter on the ground, and they retraced their steps to a little hillock where the river rushed past, leaving a broad muddy knoll above the flood. Leaving Nika to keep watch over his injured brother, Tristan, Deerfoot, and the two boys waded back to the gate. In a matter of minutes they had hacked the rotten gate open. They pulled down the hewn pieces, threw them out of the way, and went back for Marc-Antoine.

As they struggled through the waist-high stream running along the base of the glacis, holding the injured Marc-Antoine as high as possible, Tristan continued to pray for wisdom, for holy favor, for the safety of his family and his countrymen. Whatever wrongs he had suffered at their hands, he willed no man to die in this enclosed whirlpool.

At last they navigated the ascending glacis and reached the main entrance of the fort, which opened into the guardhouse. Judging by the general state of abandonment they had encountered thus far, Tristan expected the guardhouse to be empty. He signaled for Nika to pound on the locked door with the butt end of Tristan’s hatchet. They waited, heard nothing, and Nika banged on the door again. Tristan gestured her aside, took the hatchet, and traded places with her.

This door, being a little more protected from the weather, was harder to chop through than the outer gate, but it finally gave way to three or four of his weary blows with the hatchet. He started clearing away the pieces of the door and immediately saw why it had been so difficult to open.

“Get back!” he shouted as a waist-high wall of pent-up water rushed at him. He turned to grab the litter, but it was too late. The deluge shoved him into Nika, and she dropped her corner of the litter. Marc-Antoine rolled off underwater, while the three Indians shouted in terror as they tried to stay on their feet.

Bracing himself, staggered by the force of the flood, Tristan held his breath and went under for Marc-Antoine. Lungs bursting, he was just about to come up for another gulp of air when his right hand snagged fabric. Blindly grabbing at it, he hauled himself upright and jerked his brother out of the water by his ruined shirt. He caught Marc-Antoine up in his arms and held him fast, both of them coughing and spewing water.

When he could breathe again, he searched for Nika and thought he saw her at the bottom of the glacis, swimming against swirling eddies in an attempt to regain her feet. He didn’t see the three Indians, but a sound from within the guardhouse made him look back. The stream of pent-up water from within the building had slowed as the water level subsided, until he could stand without being knocked off his feet. Marc-Antoine was heavy in the best of circumstances, but his wet clothing and unsupported weight tested the limits of Tristan’s strength. He needed to find a place of shelter where he could lay his brother down and attend to his injury. Nika, Deerfoot, and the Koasati boys would have to fend for themselves for the moment.

He would have to wade through the dark guardhouse. Maybe someone had left a lantern and flint hanging out of the water’s reach. Shifting his brother a little higher in his arms, he turned to edge his way through the door.

Then, as he paused in the hallway between infirmary and guardroom, he heard it again—a hoarse noise that might have been a woman’s voice. Frowning at the tricks his mind played upon him in his anxiety, he waited for another shaft of lightning. There! Though he saw nothing but water and the leaky thatched roof overhead, he heard the shout again, a little louder and longer. In the darkness he felt along the wall with his shoulder until he found the guardroom door.

Holding onto Marc-Antoine, he was forced to find the latch with two fingers, crouching to release it. The door, swinging open on another rush of contained water, would have taken him off his feet again if he hadn’t hit the infirmary wall with his back. By now he could hear two women shouting for help.

Had Bienville been so cruel as to leave Geneviève and Ysabeau to drown in this rat hole? “Geneviève!”

“Tristan!” she screamed.

“Hold on—I’m coming!” Galvanized, muscles trembling from his brother’s dead weight, he fought his way into the room through the swirling dark water. Even with some of it having rushed out into the hallway and over the glacis, he was in waist-high water. “Where are you?”

“Center cell! Ysabeau’s on your right.”

“I don’t have a key,” he said in despair. “Marc-Antoine is injured—I can’t break you out.” He thought for a precious few seconds. “I’m going to press through to the drill ground—maybe there’ll be someplace to leave him out of the storm. Hang on—I’ll come back for you!”

With every last ounce of his strength Tristan fought his way back to the hallway. Keeping his back pressed against the wall, he sidled toward the drill ground entrance. When he stepped out into the flooded green, he saw that, though neither moon nor stars lit the weeping night sky, the rain had slackened to a mild drizzle and he could pick out the shadowy shapes of the fort’s other three buildings. A wavering lamplight came from headquarters. Murmuring a prayer of thanksgiving, even while he wondered how Nika and the three Indians fared, he waded toward the light.

He accomplished the thirty-foot uphill distance without incident, discovering that by the time he reached his destination he was no longer wading, but splashing through ankle-deep water. Mounting the steps to the gallery, he looked down at Marc-Antoine’s face and was startled to find his eyes open.

“This makes twice, big brother,” Marc-Antoine said with a wan smile. “You’ll never get rid of me now.”

Tristan sighed and leaned against the closed door. “We all have our burdens to bear.”

Aimée slipped out the side door, which opened onto Madame’s chicken yard. She was not overly fond of chickens, but if she went through the front family room, she would face Madame’s endless questions. Pausing to assess the chicken detritus she was likely to step in on the way to the river, she shifted the blanket roll tied across her shoulder with a rope. Rain had come down in torrents all day. This was starting out as a very unpleasant adventure.

She stepped out from under the thatching of the eaves. She was almost sorry she had sent Raindrop away. Life was going to be dreary indeed with only Julien for company. It was true that he had beautiful manners, he danced like an angel, and he could be charming and entertaining when he chose. But ever since the night she had taken Geneviève’s pastries to him, and allowed him the liberty of kissing her lips, he had developed an annoying habit of ordering her about. As if she were one of his cadets, or—or a kitchen wench even.

If Madame was to be believed, this was an almost universal trait of the male sex. Madame complained incessantly about Monsieur L’Anglois’s snoring, his habit of leaving dirty utensils on the table for her to pick up, his refusal to wipe his muddy boots before entering the front door. Aimée had noticed, however, that in the evenings Monsieur followed Madame’s movements about the house, anticipating her needs with a sweet devotion that attested to his love for her.

Somehow she could not picture Julien playing “Le Beau Robert” five times in a row on a violin simply because it was her favorite song.

She squared her shoulders under the weight of the scratchy rope. Julien was her choice, and no one was going to make her change her mind.

“Mademoiselle! There you are! Oh, please go back! Do not come!”

Raindrop’s escalating shrieks at last penetrated her fog of contemplation. She realized from the stench around her that she stood in Madame’s pigsty. “Raindrop? What are you doing back here so soon?”

Raindrop flung herself at Aimée in the dark. “Didn’t you hear me?” She grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the house. “You must go back inside at once! He is a very bad man!”

Aimée resisted, digging in her heels. “Stop this at once, you ridiculous child! Let go!”

“Monsieur Dufresne—he killed the Indian man, picked up his gun and—” Raindrop threw her arms about Aimée and burst into tears.

“Julien shot an Indian?” Aimée patted Raindrop’s back. “Why would he do that, at this time of night? Did you speak to him as I asked you to?”

“No!” The little girl burrowed her face against Aimée. “I was frightened when I saw that big Indian waiting to jump out at Monsieur Dufresne, so I hid behind the corner of the building and watched. They were arguing about—”

“Arguing? So it was someone Julien knows?” This was getting odder and odder by the minute.

“Yes! The Indian said he had k-killed the soldiers and Monsieur Lanier and the priest—and that Monsieur Dufresne was to pay him.”

“That makes no sense. Why would Julien want his own people dead?” Even as she said it, a tiny voice reminded her that Julien had more than once expressed contempt for the Lanier brothers and for the priests.

“I don’t know,” Raindrop wailed. “I only know what I heard and what I saw. The Indian said, ‘I killed them all,’ and Monsieur said, ‘No you didn’t, so I shall have to clean up your mess.’ They argued some more. And when the Indian turned to walk away, Monsieur Du-Dufresne, he picked up his musket and—and shot him in the back—Oh, mademoiselle, it was truly horrible, much worse than butchering a hog or wringing a chicken’s neck!”

“Shh, shh . . . it’s all right, never mind . . .” It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Julien would never shoot a man in the back. Aimée patted the little girl’s back while she gathered her scattered wits. Finally she took Raindrop by the shoulders and shook her a little. “Stop it now.”

Raindrop hiccupped. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle.”

Aimée yanked the neckcloth from about her throat and mopped Raindrop’s face. “I don’t know what you saw, but Julien would never pay anyone to murder a priest. Don’t say anything to anyone else, while I go and straighten this thing out. Better yet, tell Madame you and I are both feeling poorly and are going to bed. I will see you in the morning.”

With that colossal batch of lies, Aimée picked up the blanket roll she had dropped and left Raindrop standing in the pigsty, sobbing into the neckcloth.

She would just see what this nonsense was all about.

Geneviève was still standing on the cot, in water up to her hips, when she heard a noise from the hallway. When she had failed to shake the iron bars loose and found the oaken boards of the outer wall impenetrable, she had tried to find a way to jump high enough to reach the thatching of the roof. She had imagined that if she could create a hole big enough to climb through, she might convince her fellow prisoner to climb on her shoulders, then go for help.

Ysabeau’s despondent refusal to get off her cot had put an end to that notion, even if further thought hadn’t brought her to realize that the light cane poles to which the thatching was lashed would never sustain the weight of a grown woman. So she had simply stood praying as the water rose and rose. For all her sins, she didn’t want to die by drowning. She didn’t want to die at all, not right now; but, dear God, if it must be, not in a prison of water.

And then somehow he was here, just like the first time she’d met him, pulling her out of watery terror into a gasp of precious free air. And most blessed miracle of all, he didn’t sound angry, he didn’t sound sad or disappointed. He’d sounded terrified, as if he loved her and didn’t want her to die anytime soon.

I’ll come back for you.

Waiting, she’d held the fear at bay with those precious words. He’s coming back for you.

At first she thought the noise was a fresh onslaught of rain. But then she recognized the sound of someone wading through water toward her. A dark, shadowy form appeared in the doorway.

“Geneviève! Are you all right?”

“Yes! Oh, Tristan, I’m so glad you’re here!”

“I have the key. Hang on.”

“Ysabeau first. She’s very frightened.”

Ysabeau released a whimpering sob. “Please! Let me out!”

“I’m coming. Geneviève, I love you.” He said it as if the words had been ripped from him, and he couldn’t have held them back another moment.

She wanted to say them back to him, but there was too much unsettled between them, not least her charge of treason. So she stood silent, gripping the bars, as he unlocked Ysabeau’s cell, all the while speaking quietly to keep her from hysterics.

“Can you see enough to get to the door?” he asked the girl when the door swung open.

“I think so.” Ysabeau sounded shaken, but she took a tentative step into the flooded room, then one more. She was halfway to the guardroom door by the time Tristan moved to Geneviève’s cell.

He fumbled with the lock and key in the dark. “I will make sure Dufresne is court-martialed. Bienville sent him to release the two of you when the drill green started to flood, but he never came back. The officers have been making arrangements to evacuate the settlement and didn’t follow up.”

Lacking the energy to form a reply, Geneviève nodded, though she doubted he could see her. When the door opened, she walked into his arms.

He lifted her, held her close, and she clung to him. “I won’t leave you again,” he said against her ear.

“I’m glad,” she choked out. “Is your brother all right?”

“He’s very ill, but I left him with Nika. She’d already made it to headquarters.” He shifted his grip, slipping an arm under her knees, the other across her back, and began to wade toward the door. “I think I will not toss you over my shoulder this time,” he said with a low chuckle.

At that point, she wouldn’t have cared, but she kissed his damp cheek. “Tristan, you must know I didn’t poison that bread. I would never—”

“I know.” He stopped her lips with his, warm and possessive. “There is an explanation, and we will find it. But let’s wait until there is less immediate danger.” He kissed her again. “Please.”

“Yes. All right.” He was here, that was enough for now.

Nika sat cross-legged beside Mah-Kah-Twah’s bed, keeping vigil while the Frenchmen plotted and planned in the other room. Loud, disagreeable, they reminded her of her childhood, when she had sat in an out-of-the-way corner of her father’s hogan, listening to the elders decide on a place to make winter camp. They would come to agreement, and the women and children would be dragged along to make the best of wherever they landed.

Tonight, she was not bound to give counsel to these pigheaded Frenchmen. They were the enemies of her mother’s people, whatever their chief, Byah-Vee-Yah, liked to proclaim. She could refuse to go with them, return to the Apalachee village for her children, and wait for battle to seal her allegiances.

She laid the backs of her fingers against Mah-Kah-Twah’s forehead, as she did when her boys were ill. Was his skin perhaps a little cooler, or was that wishful thinking? His facial bones were prominent beneath his fine dark beard, his lips cracked. She poured a little water from her canteen onto her fingers and wet his mouth.

Her heart was drawn to this man. She had helped deliver him to his own people, despite her fear of Mitannu. And she did not want to leave him—as he had once left her. Revenge would bring only bitterness.

He claimed he had not taken a white woman to wife. But neither was he likely to take an Indian woman for more than a mistress. And Nika would not share him.

She thought about her conversations with Ginette. She was ashamed now that she had not allowed her friend to pray with her about her deepest desire. Ginette had shyly told her about her marriage to Mah-Kah-Twah’s brother. Her respect and affection for Tree-Stah was clear, and he seemed to hold Ginette in equal regard.

Would that God had granted her such a mate.

But, as Ginette had said, sometimes God said no. Nika only wished that God would speak with an audible voice so that she could know his will.

She looked down at Mah-Kah-Twah and found his eyes open and clear.

He smiled at her. “I dreamed you were here.”

She felt her cheeks heat. “You are better. Your shoulder no longer bleeds.”

“Where’s my brother?”

“I will get him. He asked to see you when you awoke.”

He licked his dry lips. “Could I have a drink of water first?”

“Of course!” Angry with herself that she had become so flustered under the regard of a pair of black eyes, she uncorked the canteen and lifted his head to drink.

“Thank you. My brother. Hurry, Nika.”

She corked the canteen, rose and hurried into the other room. The French leaders were all seated around a long oaken table, Byah-Vee-Yah at one end and Tree-Stah at the other. To her relief, she did not see Du-Fren.

Tree-Stah looked up when she approached him. “How is my brother?”

“Awake and asking for you.”

He shoved his chair back. “I’ll be back.” He followed Nika into the side room.

Mah-Kah-Twah had pushed himself to a sitting position. He held his injured shoulder, panting a little.

Nika rushed to him. “No, you must not. You will make yourself black out again.”

“I’m better. I have to talk to my brother.” He looked annoyed, which was a good sign.

She nodded and stepped back, but she didn’t leave the room, and he didn’t ask her to. He seemed to accept that she was part of whatever he had to say to Tree-Stah.

Tree-Stah knelt near the bed and searched Mah-Kah-Twah’s face. “You’re looking better, my brother,” he said. “Your nurse has taken good care of that wound. You are very lucky.”

Mah-Kah-Twah met Nika’s eyes. “I know. I would have died if she hadn’t found me right away.” Then he looked at his brother. “She found Father Mah-Tu’s book. Have you seen it?”

Tree-Stah frowned. “No. Do you mean the one he had me draw pictures in?”

“Yes.” Mah-Kah-Twah caught Nika’s hand. “Where is it? Will you get it?”

“Of course.” She reached to the end of the bed for the priest’s satchel. Loosening the leather string that gathered it at the top, she reached inside for the journal and handed it to Tree-Stah.

He held it in his hands for a moment, his thumb rubbing its scarred leather cover. Pinching his lips together, Tree-Stah opened the book and fanned the pages. “What am I looking for?”

Mah-Kah-Twah’s expression was tense. “Father Mah-Tu told me early on in the journey that if anything happened to him, I was to give the book to you, and the painting of the Madonna over his bed to Jon-a-Vev.”

“Did he say why?”

Mah-Kah-Twah studied his brother for a long moment. “I assumed he told you.”

“That our mother was seduced by a selfish aristocrat when she was just a young girl?” Tree-Stah gave him an odd smile. “You of all people should know that is not so unusual.”

Mah-Kah-Twah flushed and gave Nika a guilty glance. “I’m no aristocrat. And if I had known . . . well, if I had thought it possible, I would have stayed or brought her with me.”

“Ifs are useless, little brother. And as I told Father Mah-Tu, I don’t need an empty French title when my life is here.”

“The title might not be as empty as you think—especially since a fortune comes along with it. That’s what the journal outlines.” Mah-Kah-Twah leaned forward, eyes intent on his brother’s face. “The King’s support of this colony hinges on decisions he makes in other theaters of war, and our survival hinges on when and to what extent the royal coffers open to support us. As Mah-Tu said, Louis is capricious about who he listens to—and the right man in the right place of influence could make all the difference in the direction France goes as a nation—Louisiane being only one small part of it.”

Tree-Stah looked away. “My unwanted father already has a legitimate heir.”

“Who is by all accounts a lazy, spoiled spendthrift. He’s run through his allowance regularly since he gained his majority.” Mah-Kah-Twah leveled a finger at his brother. “Which is why the Comte sent Father Mah-Tu. He knew, if you were the man he hoped, then you would have to be persuaded.”

“I will read the journal,” Tree-Stah said reluctantly. “But what is the significance of the painting? My wife is a Reformist, and they’re not fond of artistic representations of the saints.”

“The document legitimizing you is inside the Madonna’s frame.” Mah-Kah-Twah lay back with a weary sigh. “Tristan, you must take this opportunity seriously.”

Nika stood up then. “Tree-Stah, your brother is very ill. He should rest before you move him.”

“You are right.” Tree-Stah stood as well. “Will you walk with me to the door, Nika?”

She looked down. Mah-Kah-Twah had closed his eyes and was already breathing deeply.

Tree-Stah stopped just inside the door, blocking her way. “I’m going to ask you again. Why were you following our contingent into Alabama territory?”

She looked at her hands, clasped loosely at her waist. “I was not following you.” That was the truth.

“Then why were you there?”

“I was going to visit my family in the Kaskaskian village.”

“Without your children.” It was not a question. “I don’t believe you.”

“I left them with my friend. Chazeh had been ill.” Also true. She glanced back at Mah-Kah-Twah’s sleeping form. She had braved considerable danger to keep him alive. If she did not tell everything she knew, the risk she had endured would be all for nothing, because the French would be overcome by the British—Mah-Kah-Twah and his brother included.

Her fingers twisted. If she told, she might never see her children again.

She looked up into Tree-Stah’s eyes, marveling that a countenance could be so hard and so compassionate all at once. He said nothing, only waited for her to decide—truth or lie. This was a good man, a strong man like Mah-Kah-Twah. A man who considered the safety and well-being of others above his own.

She was tired of being a pawn of cruel and selfish tyrants. “I have Jon-a-Vev’s letter. You are right not to trust Du-Fren. He is the British spy, not your wife.”

“But she wrote—”

She waved an impatient hand. “She wrote a message to the man who saved her life—this Kah-Vah-Yeh—and gave it to me for the father in Carolina. But I also have a letter from Du-Fren to the English commander at Charles Towne.” She slipped the priest’s satchel off her shoulder, took out both letters and handed them to Tree-Stah. “See for yourself.”

She watched him read Du-Fren’s letter first, his expression darkening.

At the end of the letter, he looked up. “He tells them that we are short of food, that the powder magazine is depleted and likely to flood in the first hard rain. That the settlement is divided into factions for and against Bienville, and the Crown is losing interest in the colony.”

“Yes. So you see what this man is capable of. He thinks to be safely away before the British muster an attack. But not with the Koasati as your commander thinks. They are arming Kaskaskians in the northeast—my own mother’s people. When the southern Indian peoples and the French are divided and weakened, the British and their allies will come in and crush you all.”

“How do you know this?” he demanded. “Can you prove it?”

“One of my agents at the Apalachee village informed me.” She spread her hands. “But do you really need me to prove it? Haven’t you known for some time that the English have been working to split and stir up the Indian tribes against one another and against France? Du-Fren thinks to control me by threatening my family. But my children are where he cannot touch them. I will no longer live in fear of cowards and traitors.”

Tree-Stah stared at her, his tired, bearded face grim. “How old is this information?”

“As of yesterday.”

He absently crumpled the letter in his hand. “Bienville must know,” he muttered and wheeled to stride into the main room. But he caught his hand on the doorframe and looked back at her. “Thank you. I’ll make sure you and your family are protected.”

She nodded as he left, at last feeling some measure of peace. Whether she lived or died, she had cleared her conscience. God would be pleased with this obedience. She turned to take up her vigil beside Mah-Kah-Twah, seating herself cross-legged at his feet. Bending her head, she closed her eyes. The most painful part would be leaving him when the time came. She had already paid a harsh price for giving herself to him, and her heart could not bear to pay it again. Slow tears escaped to drip upon her hands.

God have mercy on me.