Hunting for the Mississippi Read online

  “Oh, her! I just saw her with Hiens. She was helping him carry his clothes.”

  “What do you mean his clothes?”

  “I mean his clothes! He had done his washing and she was giving him a hand bringing his stuff back to his hammock.”

  A very bad feeling suddenly comes over me. Marie-Élisabeth might have wanted to help Hiens, but I’m worried about his real intentions.

  “Where is Hiens’s hammock?”

  “Whose hammock…? Oh, right! Beneath the fo’c’sle with the rest of the topmen. Now will you leave me alone?”

  I don’t even thank him and race off to the front of the ship. Running across a deck strewn with rigging and ropes of all kinds—halyards, stays, and shrouds—is no mean feat.

  “Holà, kid! Don’t run like that,” a sailor scolds me. “You’re gonna break a leg against a pin rail.”

  “Or hurt an honest cook,” the ship’s cook chimes in, more amused than angry.

  It feels like it takes me an eternity to reach the dark lair where sailors on the nightshift sleep. As I walk into the tiny room, the light goes out as though I’d blown on a candle. It takes a second or two for my eyes to adjust from bright sunlight to a dark room.

  “Marie-Élisabeth?”

  There’s a thump against my shoulder and a man groans. A sailor has just tossed in his bed, a single sheet nailed to the wall. He didn’t hit me on purpose; I just didn’t notice I was right beside him.

  I lower my voice and call out again.

  “Marie-Élisabeth? Are you there?”

  I can see better now. Four hammocks are hanging from the long bulkhead where the men are asleep. I hear snoring, groans, and snorting, but no answer.

  “Marie-Élisabeth?”

  “Back there,” grumbles a gruff, sleep-filled voice.

  Back there is in total darkness. If my friend is here and I can’t see her, it stands to reason that she is—

  “Geh weg!”

  I recognize the man who bumps into me as he strides to the door. It’s Hiens. I don’t know what that meant in German, but it sure doesn’t sound friendly.

  “Marie-Élisabeth?”

  “They said ‘Back there,’ pighead!” the freebooter shouts in his terrible accent before disappearing into the light outside.

  I walk toward the dark corner the brute has just bounded out of. I get down on all fours to slip beneath two hammocks that are fixed to the ceiling and sagging with so much weight.

  When I glimpse my friend right in the corner, I’m just about to walk into her. She has her back to the wall, her knees tucked below her chin, her arms wrapped around her legs, her skirt tight against the floor beneath her feet.

  “Marie-Élisabeth? Why didn’t you answer?”

  “Go away, Stache!”

  I’m more surprised than upset by her tone. She must be afraid of Hiens.

  “He’s gone, the big oaf. Come on.”

  “Let me be!”

  “Come on!” I say again. “Your parents sent me to look for you. They were worried.”

  Instead of replying or getting up, she bursts into tears.

  “Marie-Élisabeth, but what’s—”

  “She shouldn’t have bitten him.”

  I jump. The voice came from above my head. It’s one of the sailors in his hammock. All I can see is the silhouette of his thick head of hair.

  “Bitten him?” I ask in surprise. “He must have deserved it.”

  “And a little bit more, yes. But he flew into a rage. He lost his temper with the girl. Otherwise he’d have paid attention.”

  “Attention to what?”

  I turn back to Marie-Élisabeth.

  “What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing! Nothing!”

  My friend shoves me away as she gets back to her feet. I lose my balance and fall.

  “She shouldn’t have done that,” the voice above me continues. “It got him all worked up.”

  “If you saw everything, then why didn’t you help her? She’s just a little girl up against a brute like that!”

  “Ain’t none of our business, kid, what goes on in the bunks in the dark. You’ll learn that for yourself. Ain’t none of our business.”

  I don’t really understand what the sailor is getting at, but my time’s up. Marie-Élisabeth is heading for the door. I follow.

  As she ducks into the passageway leading outside, I notice that her skirt is torn. There’s blood on her leg, mixed in with grey splotches.

  “Marie-Élisabeth! What did he do to you?”

  She whirls around so quickly that I take a step back. The blue of her eyes is now tinged with purple, tiny little red veins staining the white eyeballs. They are full of anger and disgust. Suffering, too! I don’t know how to react to such mixed emotions. One thing is for sure: I won’t be asking any more questions.

  My friend’s mouth opens on either side of two rows of clenched teeth. A little foam gathers at its corner.

  “Shut up, Stache,” she hisses. “You’ll never—do you hear me? never!—tell a soul where you found me, how you found me, who you found me with! Is that clear?”

  I’m rooted to the spot. It’s not the Marie-Élisabeth I know. At least not the little ten-year-old girl who, mature as she might be, is still a little ten-year-old. But she looks like her own mother all of a sudden. An angry version of her own mother.

  “Is that clear?”

  “I… Yes, Marie-Élisabeth. Don’t wo—”

  “You can tell them I fell up at the head. That’s all. That’s where I tore my dress.”

  “O… OK.”

  And as we bring back a bucket of sea water so that she can wash her legs, I realize that from this day forward Marie-Élisabeth will never ever be a little girl again.

  10

  SAILING LESSON

  The ships are back at sea, sailing toward the mouth of the Mississippi.

  “West by northwest!”

  I love hearing the pilot of L’Aimable, Mr. Barbier, shout instructions like this to his helmsman. The helmsman tells me all about the manoeuvres he has to make.

  “You see? I push the helm until the needle points in the right direction. Then I keep her steady to stay on course. Give me a hand, would you? You stand here. Keep the tiller nice and steady. You can really feel the waves in your shoulders, can’t you? The currents are against us. They’re taking us east to Florida. But we’ve been well warned. That’s why we’re headed northwest. That way if we drift, we’ll loop back to where we’re headed. We’re making up for it, see?”

  “I see,” I say, pouting to show that I know all about it. “But there’s no land in sight. How do you know where we are?”

  “The pilot has instruments for that. Using the angle of the stars in the sky or the height of the midday sun, he can easily work out the ship’s latitude. It’s the longitude that’s hard.”

  “You’re like two old women, you two,” Barbier grumbles alongside us, trying to concentrate on his maps. “Stop jabbering away, would you?”

  “What’s longitude?” I ask the helmsman, ignoring Barbier’s grumbling.

  “The distance travelled from east to west,” he replies, glancing at the compass. “We have to estimate it. In other words, we more or less know where we are. Mr. De La Salle and the pilot of Le Joly think we’re too close to Apalachee Bay at the minute. So we’re making up for it by heading much further west.”

  “More or less.”

  “More or less, yes.”

  “And when will we arrive, do you think? In a day? A week? A month?”

  “More or less, yes,” he says again and bursts out laughing. He doesn’t have a clue, I decide.

  The wind blows my long hair across my face. I brush it away, breathing in a good lungful of fresh sea air. My lips taste of salt and my skin is mor
e tanned than it has ever been before.

  I like sailing.

  I would be happier still if Marie-Élisabeth hadn’t begun to keep her distance from me. It hurts. It’s like she’s angry at me for knowing the terrible secret we share. As though what happened to her is partly my fault. But I’d cut both my arms off for the sadness to leave her heart and for her to become the Marie-Élisabeth of before.

  Her parents have also noticed her change in attitude, her constant bouts of melancholy, her sullenness. But they put it down to all the time at sea. Too long, they say.

  More than once I’ve caught Marie-Élisabeth scrubbing her legs, right where I saw the red and grey stains running down them. Right where the stains seeped through.

  “You’re going to ruin your skin with all that salt water,” Barbier’s wife has told her more than once.

  Marie-Élisabeth only muttered a reply. It didn’t sound very nice to me. I pretended not to have heard a thing.

  PART III

  America

  11

  NAKED LIKE

  ANIMALS

  “Land!”

  The shout surprises no one. For two days, the men in charge have suspected we’ve been nearing land: because of the change in currents, the new colour of the water, the birds circling above us—birds that haven’t always been the same as the ones we saw out at sea—and even because of the type of silt and coral the lead sounding lines have been bringing back up with them.

  “Do you think it’s the Bay of the Holy Spirit, sir?” Henri Joutel asks our expedition leader. “The mouth of the Mississippi?”

  “The sand bars are certainly similar,” De La Salle replies. “But we won’t really know until we get out and do some exploring.”

  Today I’m on La Belle with a few ship’s boys who are barely two years older than me. It’s our job to carry letters between the ships’ captains. I think they’re getting ready for an important meeting of Mr. De La Salle’s officers and first mates tonight. They know we’re close to our goal.

  For hours now we’ve been sailing with just one sail—and a small one at that!—because the sounders up front want to make sure the water is deep enough that we don’t risk running aground.

  The next day, we’re treated to quite the show.

  When a few weeks ago I caught sight of the flora and fauna of the Americas, the wonderment and curiosity I felt was nothing compared to how I feel now. For the very first time, I can see what the seasoned travellers have been talking about for months: Savages!

  They approached us this morning when our people went on a reconnaissance mission with the rowboats. Some agreed to come up onto the ships in return for the tiny bells, knives, and mirrors we gave them as presents. I’m absolutely fascinated.

  Since they live as naked as the animals of the forest, I can describe their anatomy—apart from their private parts, which they keep hidden behind a loincloth wrapped around their waists. They are quite tall and muscular. Their faces are handsome, but they make themselves uglier by painting shapes and strange symbols on their skin. Their hair, which they keep very long behind their backs, has feathers on top and they—

  “They are nothing but animals,” says Pierre Duhaut, the lout who once tried to hit Marie-Élisabeth because he had walked into her.

  “The Recollects say they have souls to be converted, but I scarcely know of a Christian Savage,” his brother Dominique adds.

  “There’s Nika,” says Jean L’Archevêque, the third member of the inseparable trio.

  Nika. I had forgotten all about him. It’s true that he dresses like a European. He works with Mr. De La Salle’s servants. I think he has been with our leader ever since he discovered the Mississippi three or four years ago. Perhaps longer. He’s from the Shawnee tribe.

  “Those ones are more primitive than Nika,” says Dominique Duhaut. “They don’t understand Nika or any of the other tongues of the Mississippi that De La Salle has tried to use on them.”

  I take two steps forward. I want to tell the men that, if you ask me, it’s not because the nations speak different dialects that one is superior to the other, but I catch Pierre Duhaut’s eye. I wonder if he remembers who I am. If he remembers it was me who threw a pulley at his shoulder.

  I decide to keep a low profile instead and go back to the ship’s boys.

  It’s safer that way.

  12

  ON DRY LAND

  “Oh, Lord Jesus! Lord Jesus! Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Of course I will, Mom!”

  My mom holds me tight against her. When I manage to free myself from her hug, Mr. Talon gives me a wink.

  “It’s not the first trip ashore, Delphine,” he says. “We know the Indians are peaceful and willing to help us. What’s more, Eustache has sworn to stay right by my side. Isn’t that right, lad?”

  “You be careful, too,” Isabelle Talon retorts, pretending to glare at her husband.

  “I want to go, too, Dad,” Pierre Talon shouts, even though he’s only eight. “I’m not a baby anymore.”

  “Sorry, Pierre,” his father replies. “Mr. De La Salle says boys must be at least twelve to go ashore with the group. Eustache can leave the ship, but you can’t.”

  “What about me? What about me?” pleads Jean-Baptiste, clinging to his mother’s skirt.

  I turn toward Marie-Élisabeth, but she looks away. She pretends to be caught up in darning a piece of clothing belonging to one of her brothers. I would have appreciated a goodbye smile. Despite her change in attitude and her new-found indifference to me, I still love her just as much. I wish I didn’t know what happened to her. That way, there wouldn’t be this dark secret between us, a secret that doesn’t bring us closer, but instead drives us apart.

  Perhaps time will help. Perhaps one day she’ll go back to being the kind Marie-Élisabeth of old, once the sorrow Hiens the freebooter left inside her has been diluted.

  Perhaps.

  I follow Mr. Talon. After one last kiss for his wife, he climbs the ladder through the main hatchway and up onto the deck. We go back to the group of one hundred and twenty volunteers who are taking their places in the rowboats.

  * * *

  “Look, Eustache! Look!”

  Just like me, Mr. Talon has just seen a buffalo for the first time. Just like me, he’s very excited.

  The animals are a little like cows covered in sheep’s wool. They are absolutely enormous, their heads disproportionately big compared to the rest of their bodies. Their eyes on either side of the head are so far away from each other that they can see as much behind them as ahead of them. That’s what the Natives say, at least.

  Some of us have been appointed hunters for the group. They fire four times and as many animals fall to the ground—delicious! After weeks of dry biscuits, salted fish, and stagnant water, it feels good to eat fresh meat and drink our fill.

  “Brr! And they said it was going to be warm here,” Mr. Talon mutters through chattering teeth. “It feels like I’m back in Canada.”

  “Yep! But our fine young dandies don’t seem too concerned by our shivering,” moans Oris, a sailor from L’Aimable. His mouth is half full as he motions toward De La Salle, Joutel, Father Cavelier, and Moranget with his knife.

  “Now, now, don’t be unfair,” Lucien Talon replies. “They’re cold, too.”

  “But they have nice big coats and keep close to the fire.”

  He’s not wrong.

  But with the hide of a hare that Marie-Élisabeth’s dad killed earlier over my shoulders, I don’t feel too bad.

  “The man is a fool! He’s incapable of accepting that we know more than him, that we are better than him—and senior to him!”

  The raised voice belongs to Mr. De La Salle. It’s not hard to work out that he means Captain Beaujeu. Both men have been at loggerheads since we left La Rochelle. Instead
of bringing them together, the dangers we have faced along the way, the storms at sea, the loss of the Saint-François, the ups and downs of the voyage, seem only to have deepened their differences. Worse still, factions seem to be forming: those who agree with one, and those who are behind the other.

  “We’re going to end up with two different factions, if we don’t watch out,” sighs Mr. Talon, who’s thinking just like me. “That doesn’t augur well for the colony. We’ll end up divided. Or worse, at odds with each other.”

  “We’ve found a frozen lake less than a league away,” Desfloges suddenly announces, coming over to sit with the ten or so people who make up our little team. “And a freshwater river. Maybe it’s the Mississippi everyone’s so keen to find.”

  A shrug or two show the sailor that his news is of little interest to us. So Desfloges lowers his voice and adds mysteriously:

  “We also found a dead Indian.”

  Heads turn to face him. His half smile shows that he’s happy to have piqued our interest.

  “Throat slit from ear to ear,” he adds.

  “Were they fighting among themselves?” a sailor asks.

  “His tattoos were the same as the other Savages’ who come to see us from time to time,” Desfloges replies. “He wasn’t from an enemy tribe.”

  “It’s Indian custom to scalp their enemies,” adds Oris. “Was he scalped?”

  “No,” says Desfloges. “And the body we found had his hands tied behind his back with a hemp rope.”

  “Hemp?” Oris asks, surprised. “But the Indians don’t have…”

  “It was one of ours that killed him.”

  13

  THE NATIVES ATTACK

  In February 1685, our team is still ashore. Out on the water, the pilots aboard L’Aimable and La Belle are sounding the river to find the best channel. They want to pass the ships through because we think we’re on one of the shores of the Mississippi Delta. At least, that’s what Mr. De La Salle says. But he’s not quite sure. It’s the right latitude. But this darned latitude, which we can only more or less work out, is causing the problem.