Shaman Part 28

BOOK 2

1831

Moon of Ripe Cherries

_July_

8

Homecoming

Rejoicing at the sight of Victor, Auguste stepped up to the gangplank of the paddle wheeler _Virginia_ and paused there a moment to look around.

He couldn't help himself: he smiled broadly. The settlement hugging the bluff was not home, but it was closer to home than he had been in a long time.

And this summer, he had decided, he would go back to his true home. He would end the sorrow of being cut off from his people.

This was the sixth spring since Pierre de Marion had come and taken him to Victoire, and, as with every spring before it, he missed Saukenuk terribly. He longed for his mother, for the teachings of Owl Carver, for the arms of Redbird, whom he had lost almost as soon as he made her his.

For six years--he had learned to count years as white people did--he had obeyed his father and the promise made with the calumet and had not tried even to send a message to the British Band. He even felt it was a wise rule. To communicate with his loved ones would have torn him in two. But more than a month ago in New York City, strolling in the warm evening air on the busy cobblestone streets, past dooryards where lilacs were blooming, he made up his mind that when he returned to Illinois he would visit Victoire only briefly and then would go back to Saukenuk. He was twenty-one years old now, and among white people that meant he was master of his own life.

He gazed up at the bluff. There were more houses up there than when he had last come out here, two years ago. Some were built on the bottomland itself, in spite of the danger of flooding.

He saw the palisade and flags and towers of Raoul de Marion's trading post at the top of the bluff, and felt his joy fading. He would have to face Raoul's insults and threats, as he had every other time he came back to Victor. His belly tightened as he remembered, as if it had just happened, that first encounter six years ago, the burning-ice feel of the knifepoint slicing into his cheek, his hand gripping his own knife, Aunt Nicole and Father holding him back.

Seemingly with a will of its own his hand went to the scar and his finger traced the ridge that ran from eye to mouth.

He brought his gaze down from the top of the bluff and saw a more welcome sight--Grandpapa, Aunt Nicole and Guichard in a black open carriage from the estate, waiting to take him up to Victoire. He ran down the gangplank and strode over to them.

"Auguste! My G.o.d, you're beautiful!" Aunt Nicole exclaimed, and then her face reddened and she looked downward.

He felt that he looked good, though "beautiful," as he understood English, was not the right word for a woman to use about a man. But he supposed she admired his new clothes, the fawn-colored cutaway coat and vest, the ruffled silk s.h.i.+rt, the tight, bottle-green trousers. He wished he were not already holding his tall beaver hat in his hand, so that he could tip it to her with the graceful motion he'd learned watching the dandies on Broad Way.

Grandpapa leaned out of the carriage and hugged Auguste. His embrace felt strong, and his eyes were bright. Auguste was happy to see him in good health.

_But where is Father?_

Auguste shook hands with Guichard, who had climbed down stiffly from the driver's seat.

"Your trunk, Monsieur Auguste?"

Auguste pointed out the big wooden chest with bra.s.s fittings that had been unloaded at the Victor pier along with bales and barrels from the hold of the _Virginia_.

Guichard approached two buckskin-clad men lounging by a piling. He pointed out the trunk as Auguste had done.

"For _him_?" said one of the men, glowering at Auguste from under his c.o.o.nskin cap. "White men don't wait on G.o.dd.a.m.n Injuns." He spat tobacco juice at Guichard's feet and turned away, as did the other man.

Auguste wanted to throw the man who had spat at Guichard into the river. He had no doubt that he could do it, though like most men who lived in Victor, the man was armed with knife and pistol. Auguste had been taught to fight as a Sauk, and he had been a champion boxer, wrestler and fencer at St. George's School. But he was not going to get into a brawl in his first minutes ash.o.r.e. Time enough for that if he met Raoul.

"Come on, Guichard. The trunk's light enough. We don't need any help."

The old servant taking one end and Auguste the other, they loaded it into the back of the carriage.

"Good to see you again, Grandpapa," Auguste said as he dropped into the seat facing Elysee and Nicole, his back to the driver. "Aunt Nicole, it's you who are beautiful. But where's Father?"

Grandpapa patted him on the knee. "Not feeling well, I'm afraid. He sends his apologies. We will go to him now, at once."

Grandpapa was trying to make his voice sound unconcerned. But Auguste heard an undertone of sorrow, the anguish of a father who had lost one of his children years ago and would soon lose another.

With understanding, grief sank into Auguste's marrow. Father--Star Arrow--had hung on these past six years, growing sicker and sicker, the evil in his belly swelling up like a poisonous toad. Now the end was near.

Auguste found himself looking deep into Aunt Nicole's eyes, full of shared sorrow.

Guichard flicked the reins, and the carriage started off, turning away from the dock, pa.s.sing the warehouses and rattling down the long dusty-white road that led across the bottomland fields to the bluff. It must have been a good spring out here; though this was only the beginning of July, the corn was already up to a man's waist.

Auguste felt he would look better wearing his beaver hat as they rode along. He put it on his head, pulling the rolled-up brim down with both hands, and set it in place with a pat on the crown.

"So, you are now a finished graduate of St. George's School?" said Elysee with a smile. "Monsieur Charles Winans has sent long letters full of good reports about you."

Aunt Nicole reached over and squeezed his hand. "We're proud of you, Auguste." Her soft, fleshy hand was warm, and her eyes sparkled at him.

He sensed a feeling in her that was more than the affection of an aunt for a nephew. She now had eight children, he knew, and every time he had seen her and Frank together, they had seemed very much in love. But Aunt Nicole was a big woman. She had room in her big heart, perhaps, for more than one love.

Embarra.s.sed by what he felt radiating from her, Auguste turned to Elysee.

"If I learned anything at St. George's, I owe it all to the way you prepared me, Grandpapa. Anyone who could take a boy who could barely speak English, and in two years cram enough knowledge into his head for him to go to secondary school in New York City--such a man is no ordinary teacher."

"You were no ordinary pupil, my boy," said Elysee, leaning back in the carriage, his hands resting one on top of the other on his silver-headed cane. "And Pere Isaac laid down a solid foundation in that head of yours. Those Jesuits are good for that, at least, black-hearted rogues though they may be in most other respects."

"Papa!" Nicole gave Elysee a reproving frown.

Elysee quickly patted her knee. "Forgive me, my child. Let me not shake the faith that sustains you."

"It would take more than your wicked tongue to disturb my faith, Papa,"

Nicole said with a wry smile.

It was amusing to hear Grandpapa and Aunt Nicole bicker about what the whites called "faith." As the carriage rolled along, Auguste recalled the many lectures he had listened to on Jesus and the Trinity at St.

George's, which was affiliated with the Episcopal Church. But Auguste had walked with the White Bear and talked with the Turtle. He _knew_ them as he had never known the white people's G.o.d, and what went on in their dimly lit, waxy-smelling churches had no attraction for him.

He knew that Christians, for the most part, saw his beliefs about the spirit world as rubbish sprung out of ignorance--or, worse, inspired by the Evil One. Pere Isaac's efforts to persuade him to walk in the way of Jesus had prepared him for that. At school he did not speak of things sacred to him, so as not to expose them to white scorn. When teachers and fellow students tried to persuade him to take instruction in Christianity, he was polite and evasive.

And when he felt he was smothering in the noise and crowding and dirt of the huge city of New York, he would borrow a pony from the lady he called Aunt Emilie--his father's cousin, actually--and ride out of New York along a trail that led to the north end of the island of Manhattan. There in a forest cave he had found, he would chew a bit of the sacred mushroom Owl Carver had given him and restore his link with the spirit world by journeying with the White Bear. All through these six years, _his_ faith had remained strong.

Nicole broke in on his thoughts. "You're still studying medicine?"

"Just a beginning: I've read some books, attended some lectures. I a.s.sisted a surgeon--Dr. Martin Bernard--at New York Hospital. I bought myself a surgeon's box of instruments--got it in the trunk, there. But if anybody came down with anything worse than an ingrown toenail, I'd be scared to do anything about it."