Hunting for the Mississippi Read online

  “A tyrant.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Judging by the raised voices, the group’s new leaders are already splitting into two clear factions. The harmony won’t last long.

  I thank God again for dividing my enemies. It makes my work easier, isolates the men I hate, and leaves them more vulnerable to my plans. All I need is a little helping hand and I’ll be able to take care of the evil that I left Marie-Élisabeth open to, the evil that led to her death.

  And God, once more, hears my prayer. It is answered a few days later. A tragedy opens the way for me to exact my revenge.

  35

  AMONG REBELS

  De Marle and I are huddled under a horse examining an injury near its hoof when Hiens and Ruter, the Breton we found in the forest who quickly became his friend, walk past without seeing us. They talk away, not bothering to keep their voices down.

  “There’s no reasoning with the idiot,” Hiens grumbles. “He’s set on following Joutel to the Mississippi and up to Canada.”

  “It’ll not be with me,” Ruter replies. “I’m going back to the Savages. We’ve all the food we could want, all the women we could want, and we can live as free men.”

  “He’ll never let us split up. He’s raving mad. He’ll kill us instead.”

  “Not if we kill him first,” Ruter says, after a pause.

  I bite down on my lip, not wanting to express how happy I am to see my enemies so divided. I look back up to see De Marle’s crestfallen face.

  “They don’t know we heard them. We’ve nothing to fear,” I murmur to calm him down once the two monsters are out of reach.

  “But they... they’re going to kill Duhaut. We have to warn him.”

  My sympathetic expression turns savage, like an animal.

  “If you so much as open your mouth to let Duhaut know, I’ll be the one who kills you in cold blood.”

  I’m no longer the shy little boy I was at the beginning of this adventure. I’ve become the worst, the most vicious of men.

  * * *

  I’ve lost track of the days, but I think it must already be early May. We zigzag from one makeshift camp to the next, without ever deciding whether to head north or south. Tensions mount among the rebels, while the others become more fearful. The Recollects calm everyone down as best they can, Henri Joutel dreams only of Canada… and I only of killing those responsible for my most recent troubles.

  Most of us go to mass this morning. Pierre Talon is the altar boy. I saw Jean L’Archevêque go hunting earlier. These days he tends to keep his distance from the men he usually hangs around with.

  Not far away, Duhaut and Liotot are pretending to take no interest in the ceremony. But I can see their thoughts are with the priests’ prayers with every nod of their head. Perhaps they’re beginning to worry more about their souls, sensing what lies ahead for them.

  And they’re not wrong.

  The mass is coming to an end when Hiens suddenly bursts in. Ruter, Grollet, and twenty Natives are with him. Without paying us any attention, they march right over to...

  “Duhaut, it’s my turn to be in command,” Hiens begins.

  “As you like,” Duhaut shrugs.

  “And from now on we’re heading south. Back to Fort Saint Louis.”

  Duhaut bristles at the news. Liotot, also nervous and as spiteful as usual, does the same.

  “That’s stupid. We’re no match for the Karankawa.”

  “That’s the way it is.”

  “It’ll take two days, three, to take down the tents, pack up our supplies, load the horses...”

  “We leave today. I’m the leader. You just said so.”

  “No.”

  Instead of showing annoyance, Hiens’s features relax. As though he’d been hoping that’s what he would say.

  “Then we have a mutiny on our hands,” he says, grabbing hold of the pistol on his belt.

  He aims it at Duhaut’s head. He’s already pulled the trigger before Duhaut can react. The well-maintained wheel-lock produces the spark that lights the dry powder.

  Duhaut’s head explodes.

  “My God!”

  Liotot bends down to pick up the arquebus at his feet. But Ruter sees it coming. He moves more quickly, raising his own musket and firing. I can count three separate bloody stars that tear their way through Liotot’s clothes. Ruter had loaded his weapon with more than one ball, by the looks of things.

  His victim falls to the ground moaning.

  “Good heavens! Good heavens!” chirrups a priest. “Are you going to kill us all?”

  “Calm down, Sackcloth!” Hiens replies, his expression a mixture of irritation and sympathy. “No one else gets harmed.”

  He stares at Henri Joutel and me for a second.

  “No one else,” he repeats, reloading his pistol. “We need each other if we’re going to make it out of this adventure alive.”

  “Apart from maybe L’Archevêque,” says Ruter between gritted teeth. “We don’t know which side he’s on.”

  “The fact remains that you have murdered your comrade Duhaut in cold blood,” retorts a Recollect, no doubt finding the courage to stand up to the killer because he’s had enough of the murders.

  “That’s the man who killed our commander-in-chief, Father,” Hiens answers. “I punished him for his crime, that’s all. In exchange for this piece of justice, perhaps you might agree to plead in my favour if ever a new royal expedition comes to our rescue back at Fort Saint Louis.”

  * * *

  Mr. Joutel rushes off to find Jean L’Archevêque to tell him what happened and let him know that Ruter and Hiens are out to kill him.

  “But where can I run to?” the rebel wonders out loud. “I don’t want to leave the group.”

  “I’ll act as messenger,” says Mr. Joutel. “I’ll plead in your favour. Don’t show yourself again until I’ve had them promise not to harm you.”

  Henri Joutel runs off to meet Hiens and Ruter.

  “L’Archevêque will be more useful alive than dead,” he argues. “The Caddo and the Cenis are our allies at the moment, but what happens if they turn against us like the Karankawa? There won’t be enough of us white men to keep them at bay.”

  Given how the Natives now look at us with increasing distrust, the argument wins over the new leaders.

  “Fine,” says Ruter. “But we’ll keep an eye on him.”

  And that’s how Henri Joutel paid off his debt of honour to Jean L’Archevêque.

  Duhaut died on the spot from a single ball, but Liotot, despite having been struck three times, continues to writhe on the ground. His slow death takes three hours. The Recollects have time to hear his confession and administer his last rites.

  “My God! Will he ever stop moaning?” Ruter suddenly exclaims, putting his hands over his ears in a show of annoyance.

  Hiens grunts in reply. Ruter picks up his arquebus and wordlessly stomps over to Liotot, who is still surrounded by the Recollect priests.

  “Get out of there!” he shouts.

  The priests step back in horror. The rebel puts the barrel of his weapon to the dying man’s head and, without another word, fires one last ball.

  The quarrel that divided the rebels is over.

  * * *

  “Pierre…”

  Young Pierre Talon, convinced that I need a helping hand, hurries over to me. I’m a little ways from the camp, busy tying up the horses for the night.

  “Pierre, you’re no longer a child,” I tell him, putting my arm around his shoulder. “You’re eleven years old.”

  “You’re right!” he replies proudly.

  “Do you want to hear a secret? A terrible secret?”

  He looks at me with Marie-Élisabeth’s big blue eyes. His silence is the best consent I could wish for.

/>   “Come on, then. Tonight I’ll tell you something about how your dad and sister died.”

  36

  THE RETURN

  OF THE HUMMINGBIRD

  Just like every morning, Hiens has gone off by himself to smoke his first pipe and let his thoughts wander. At today’s camp, he’s opted for a mound off to one side overlooking a stream. From behind a strange clump of pineapple trees and cactuses, he can keep an eye on the camp without anyone seeing him.

  He uses orange leaves to sweep a few ants away from the base of a huge pecan tree. Leaning his back against the trunk, he lights his pipe, then, with the stem between his lips, gazes off into the blue smoke he blows out of his nostrils.

  Pierre Talon was already hiding near the river before Hiens got there and the freebooter gives a start when he sees him.

  “Was machst du dann hier?”

  Often, when he speaks before thinking, his words come out in German.

  Pierre acts surprised to see him—very well, if you ask me. I smile to myself as I think that Marie-Élisabeth’s brother would probably be a hit with the other actors on the streets of La Rochelle.

  “What are you doing here?” Hiens asks, switching from German.

  He lets go of the pistol he had reached for instinctively.

  “I came for a swim.”

  “You’re disobeying orders? No one is to wander off from camp alone.”

  “I don’t like taking my clothes off in front of everyone.”

  “You’re afraid we’ll laugh at your manhood? And what’s this? What are you holding?”

  “A green stone I found in the river. Do you think it’s an emerald?”

  I sneak out of my hideaway in the tall grass while Pierre distracts the German. I get closer, a heavy stone hanging from the end of my slingshot. I won’t get a second chance. I need to get close enough to hit the target and hit it hard.

  “Das ist ein blöder Kieselstein. It’s only a pebble. It’s not even green, only a little—”

  The German whirls around to see me. I’ve barely got my slingshot going and he’s already noticed the whir of the hummingbird. He’s on his toes, all right! I suppose a man with his lifestyle has to be.

  He loses all interest in Pierre, lets his pipe fall to the ground, and clutches the pistol pressed against his gut.

  I don’t have time to put more force into my shot or to aim any better. With the gasp of a leaping predator, the leather on my slingshot slackens and the projectile flies toward its target. Hiens uses his extraordinary reflexes to move his head out of the way.

  The stone misses the temple I had been aiming for, hitting him above the eye. The blow doesn’t have the impact I had hoped for and Hiens, instead of crumpling to the ground, continues to stagger backward, regains his balance, then draws his pistol and points it in my direction.

  “God. Damn. It.”

  Thankfully for me, his eyebrow has been cut and blood is pouring into his eyes. He’s firing blind. I use the extra fraction of a second I’ve been given to hurl myself to the side. I’ve moved a foot when the gun goes off. The ball rips away part of my shirt sleeve, but I throw myself at Hiens without a scratch on me.

  When Hiens wipes some of the blood away from his eyes with the back of his hand, he only has eyes for me. He’s lost all interest in Pierre. Probably because he thinks he’s too young. But Pierre has just picked up a club we left in the grass earlier. The hit that lands on our foe’s shoulder isn’t especially strong, but the element of surprise helps rattle Hiens.

  The freebooter twists away and raises his elbow to shrug off the blow, allowing me to reach him. Our chests come together. My weight and momentum throw him off balance. He falls backward. I put my left arm around his neck and pull him tight. We collapse into the pineapples and cactuses. My shirt and pants are torn, my skin is cut to shreds, but I barely notice.

  “Remember Marie-Élisabeth, you monster. And remember her father.”

  He grits his teeth, but I detect a hint of cheer in his anger. He must think I’m sure I have him beaten when he knows he’s ten time times stronger than I am. He’s thinking that in a second, maybe two, long enough to have some fun, he’ll flip me onto my back and beat my windpipe to a pulp. He doesn’t even think to pin my free arm, which could swing a hook at him. Blinded by blood, he doesn’t see a thing coming.

  My right shoulder tightens and my fist comes down. It’s clutching the knife with the broken handle used to kill Lucien Talon. Hiens takes the blade right in the chest, spluttering more with surprise than pain. He grabs at the back of my shirt while his free hand searches frantically for my wrist. But this time I go for his gut. His hands go straight to the wound and I attack his chest again.

  I don’t think I got the heart because he’s still clawing at my clothes. Giving everything he has, he manages to grab the wrist I’m holding the knife in.

  “I’m not the one stabbing you, you monster,” I gasp. “It’s Lucien Talon. With the same knife that killed him.”

  I’ve ground to a halt on top of him. With nothing but contempt to throw at him. And I don’t hold back.

  “And Marie-Élisabeth. You like raping little girls, don’t you? She’s happy now too. She’s smiling down at us from heaven. But you’ll be burning in hell. And the day I tell my mom all about this morning, she’ll burst out laughing and spit on your memory.”

  Still blinded by the clumps of red spattered across the whole top half of his face, he opens his mouth to reply. Will he ask forgiveness for his sins? Or respond to my hatred with a fury approaching my own? I’ll never know. Bubbling scarlet floods his mouth and spills out over his beard. His lungs have been punctured. His chest rises in one final effort to pull in air... and falls down flat for the last time as he drowns in his own blood.

  The seconds tick by slowly as his fingers refuse to let go of me. In the end, I need Pierre Talon’s help to dislodge them. Once I’m back on my feet, my gaze shifts back and forth between Hiens’s body and the knife I’m still holding.

  “The others are coming,” Pierre says matter-of-factly, as though to keep his distance from the horror he’s just been involved in. “The shot must have sounded the alarm.”

  Between the stems of the cactuses and pineapple trees, I can make out a handful of Natives standing around Ruter, Joutel, and L’Archevêque. Arquebuses in hand, they advance slowly, looking all around them, afraid they’ll come across the foes who surprised Hiens.

  When they draw level with us, Joutel gasps in disgust and horror. I think he’s less disturbed to see Hiens’s body than he is to discover the perpetrators: two young members of the group, among the most mild-mannered and the most reserved of the lot.

  “Well, well. How did you catch him out?” is all a surprised Ruter manages to say.

  Strangely, no one seems sad to see the back of the German freebooter. No one even steps in when Pierre and I stand over the body to push it down the slope and into the stream. No one except for Henri Joutel.

  “No. We have to... We have to dig a grave, give the man a Christian burial,” he stammers.

  I let out a roar of such hatred that it surprises even me.

  “Did he let us do the same for Lucien Talon before he threw his body to the crocodiles?”

  “Lu… Lucien Talon?” says Joutel in amazement.

  “So it was Hiens that killed him,” L’Archevêque wonders, but doesn’t expect an answer.

  “And when he was with Duhaut,” I add, “did you give Mr. De La Salle a Christian burial? Or did you leave him for the vultures?”

  Silence is my only answer.

  “And you all knew about Marie-Élisabeth! You can’t not have seen him forcing her to meet with him over all those years! He raped her for years. And no one came to her defence... or to mine when people said I was the father of her child!”

  L’Archevêque pretends to be lost in tho
ught. The Natives look on in amazement, many shaking their heads. Ruter looks at my torn clothing and bloody scratches with new-found respect.

  “And all the trouble we had with the Karankawa! It all started because of him, because he went around murdering them! That meant he could put pressure on Marie-Élisabeth, show her the threats against her dad were real. He wanted her to see that killing meant nothing to him.”

  “The dead Savages? That was him?”

  Henri Joutel seems completely taken aback.

  “Hiens almost wiped out the whole colony just because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself.”

  De La Salle’s lieutenant goes from being dumbstruck to looking at Hiens with tears in his eyes. He’s not crying for the German, far from it, but perhaps for Marie-Élisabeth and her dad. Maybe he’s upset he didn’t realize that the dangers facing the colony came from a single man. At the start, at least. Or maybe simply because he wasn’t able to stop hatred and resentment from flooding the hearts of the two young men on his expedition.

  “I won’t write any of this down,” Joutel says suddenly in a whisper. “This didn’t happen. May everyone keep to himself the aberration that led these boys to take such drastic action. The harm caused by Hiens was such that they... they...”

  An unconvincing, ill-timed laugh interrupts him. Everyone turns to Ruter.

  “Well, boys?” he asks. “This the first time you killed a man? How do you feel? Any regrets?”

  His second guffaw rings even more hollow. Joutel and L’Archevêque try to hide their disgust. I fling Hiens’s knife to the ground, put my arm around Pierre’s shoulder, and lead him back to camp with me. Without looking up, I reply: “Killing a demon who raped a little girl again and again for years doesn’t leave you with any regrets. It’s like slitting a pig’s throat.”

  37

  THE VENGEFUL GOD

  The God of the Bible is not the God of love and forgiveness proclaimed by the Recollects. He is a vengeful, violent God. Didn’t He drown all of humanity, sparing only Noah’s family, all because of a grudge? That’s why He soothes me whenever I act just like He himself would have done.