Shaman by Robert Shea (nice books to read TXT) 📖

in singsong Latin at the linen-covered table that had been set up as an altar before the fireplace. Let the fight begin, for God's sake.

Indians are all cowards at heart. When I take over here, Pierre's precious little red bastard will slink away, like Black Hawk did last summer.

A chill spread across Raoul's back as he asked himself: What if Auguste doesn't slink away? He might try to rally the servants and some of the townspeople to fight for him.

They wouldn't fight for a mongrel bastard. People hated Indians. Look how many men rushed down to the Rock River to fight Black Hawk.

But many people had loved Pierre. This hall was filled, and there were more people outside who couldn't get in because there wasn't room. All of them paying their last respects to Pierre. And they knew that Pierre wanted Auguste to take his place. Would any of them fight to see that Pierre's will was done?[148]

He felt colder still as he considered the odds. Just about every man in Smith County had his own rifle or pistol. And Raoul and the men he'd recruited for today were far outnumbered. He wished he had hired more men. But too many and the secret would be out, and then Auguste would be ready for him.

Raoul tried to calm himself. Everyone in Smith County might be armed, he reasoned, but not everyone wanted to use their weapons. A lot of men wouldn't fight unless their backs were to the wall. It was the ones who were willing to fight who got to give orders to the rest. The men Raoul had picked, Eli and Hodge and the rest of them, were born fighters.

There'd be those who would condemn him, he thought, for seizing the land the very day of his brother's funeral. It was indecent, he admitted to himself. But he had no choice. He couldn't allow Auguste to get his feet planted firmly. He couldn't allow Pierre's will to be read aloud.

He felt even better when he remembered that with Pierre dead the servants would be taking their orders from Armand. He looked around the hall for the overseer. There he was, near the door, most of his face buried by his thick brown beard. Armand's wife, Marchette, was standing next to him. Sporting a black eye, Raoul noticed with amusement.

Armand Perrault was one who didn't love Pierre.

That sanctimonious hypocrite Pierre. First the squaw, the mongrel's mother. Then he marries Marie-Blanche, and as soon as she dies, he's putting it to the cook.

Raoul took a deep breath of relief when he saw that Père Isaac had finally finished with the funeral mass. The old Jesuit was again sprinkling holy water on the black-painted coffin, heaped with wreaths of roses and chrysanthemums that lay on trestles in the center of the hall. Frank Hopkins, Raoul knew, had built that coffin of oak planks.

Old red-nosed Guichard came up to Raoul. "Your father requests that you be one of those who carries your brother's coffin to the wagon."

Raoul felt a momentary jolt of fear. Help pick up Pierre's coffin and carry it, when he was about to dispossess Pierre's son? If he laid a hand on Pierre's coffin, God might strike him dead. Or Pierre's ghost would rise up against him.[149]

He shook his head. Fool's thinking.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Guichard."

He was angered to see Auguste standing opposite him when he went to the head of the coffin. It was infuriating to see Pierre's features in that brown-skinned face. The half-breed was wearing a green clawhammer jacket, with a black silk band around the left arm.

His arms and back strained as they took the weight of his corner of the coffin. A chorus of grunts arose from Raoul, Auguste, Armand, Frank Hopkins, Jacques Manette and Jean-Paul Kobell as they hoisted the coffin to their shoulders. They trudged out the door with it and slid it on the bed of a flower-bedecked farm wagon. Guichard helped Elysée climb up on the wagon. A snap of the old servant's whip started the two horses moving, as black ribbons tied to their harnesses fluttered.

Raoul walked alone, following the cart the half mile south along the bluffs to the burial ground. Some of the hands had cut a track through the shoulder-high prairie grass for the funeral procession to follow. The fiddler Registre Bosquet marched right behind the wagon playing hymns, and the servants sang in French.

Raoul cast his eye back over the long line of people following the coffin. His glance slid past Nicole and Frank and their passel of kids. With a feeling of satisfaction he saw two of his key men walking near the end of the procession, Justus Bennett, the county land commissioner, and Burke Russell, the county clerk. One copy of Pierre's will was in Russell's keeping, and Raoul had already told him what to do with that. Russell's wife, Pamela, was walking beside him, a handsome woman with chestnut hair that she didn't braid as most women did but allowed to fall in soft waves under her broad-brimmed hat. Strongly attracted to her himself, Raoul wondered how a bespectacled weakling like Burke Russell had ever been able to attract such a fine-looking woman. And what she'd do if she had a sporting proposition from an equally fine-looking man.

They were at the cemetery now. Raoul liked this hillside rising out of the bluffs, where Pierre's wife, Marie-Blanche, lay overlooking the bottomland and the river. The graves of about a dozen others who had worked and died at Victoire were surrounded by a low split-rail fence. Tall cedar trees shadowed the white gravestones. The flat markers with their rounded tops, names, dates and inscriptions[150] were chiseled by Warren Wilgus, the mason who'd recently moved into the area. Auguste had already made arrangements to have Pierre's headstone carved.

The sight of a solid limestone cube in the center of the cemetery gave Raoul a twinge of guilt, as it always did. It was the first stone to have been placed in the cemetery, and was a memorial to his mother, Estelle de Marion, who was buried not here but in Kaskaskia, where she had died in 1802 giving birth to him.

It wasn't my fault!

Helene was also remembered, though not buried here. The Indians had thrown her poor, mutilated body into Lake Michigan. Her memorial marker stood next to Maman's stone. A carved angel spread his wings over Helene's name and dates, "HELENE DE MARION VAILLANCOURT, Beloved Daughter and Sister. 1794-1812. She sings before the throne of God." Below that were inscribed the name and dates of her husband, Henri Vaillancourt, whose body also had never been found.

Raoul carried inside himself his own inscription for Helene: Murdered by Indians, August 15, 1812. She will be avenged.

And one act of vengeance would take place today, when the half-Sauk mongrel, whose presence was an affront to Helene, was thrown off this land.

It gave Raoul an uneasy feeling to be working with Auguste, lifting Pierre's coffin off the wagon. It might be bad luck. But the time to strike had not yet come, so he had to walk beside Auguste carrying the coffin to the newly dug grave. There, crouching in unison, the six pallbearers laid the coffin on a cradle of two ropes, each end held by two servants, over the oblong pit. Bending to let his burden down hurt Raoul's back, and he glanced over at Auguste, hoping to see him having trouble. But the mongrel's dark face was impassive.

When Raoul saw Elysée shuffling through the gate, leaning on his silver-headed walking stick, he felt a new tingle of dread. How would his father greet the move he was going to make? Except for a few brief and bitter meetings at which he and Papa and Pierre had tried and failed to settle their differences, he had not spoken to his father in six years. Armand often brought infuriating news of the old man's growing fondness for the mongrel, making Raoul hate the redskinned bastard all the more. Elysée would hardly be happy with[151] what he did today, of course. But would Papa try to fight his only surviving son? If he did, Raoul would have to fight back, and then he might be punished by God.

Nonsense. God doesn't side with Indians. What I am doing is right, because Pierre was seduced and deluded.

But it wouldn't hurt to try to get in good with the old man. Raoul walked quickly over to him.

"Take my arm, Papa."

Elysée looked up at him, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, his face blank, his skin wrinkled parchment.

The old man's had his share of grief. Too bad he couldn't find reason to be happy with me. But that's his fault.

In a low, hoarse voice Elysée said, "Thank you, son. It was good of you to come today."

Raoul sensed an accusation.

"Why wouldn't I come to my own brother's funeral?"

"Because you hated him," Elysée said softly.

At least the old man didn't seem to suspect that he had another reason for being here today. Containing his anger, Raoul helped his father walk to the grave. There he left Elysée with Guichard and went around to stand facing north, where he could see the château.

His nagging fear eased a little. So far he had seen no sign that he would meet with any opposition. It was hard to believe that the mongrel and his supporters could be planning anything in secret. Still he knew his heart would not slow down till this was all over.

Père Isaac stood at the head of Pierre's grave, next to Marie-Blanche's tombstone. A faint breeze from the river didn't disturb his gray-black hair or his beard, but rustled the tassels of the purple stole around his neck, the winglike sleeves of his white surplice and his ankle-length black cassock.

Trying to hold still as his heart pounded and his hands trembled, Raoul watched Père Isaac shake holy water over the coffin, which now lay at the bottom of the grave. The priest gave his sprinkler to one of the boys assisting him, opened a prayerbook bound in black leather and began the graveside prayers.

Will this never end?

Raoul stood with his head bowed. He puzzled over what Elysée had said about hating Pierre.[152]

Papa always loved Pierre more than me. Thought I was some kind of savage because I don't have all those French ways like him and Pierre. I'm the most American member of this family, and he should be proud of me.

I didn't hate Pierre. It was just this damn business of him caring more about redskins than about his own people.

And he wasn't there when I needed him.

Raoul found himself wishing he could talk to Pierre one last time, try to make him understand why he felt as he did and had to do the things he did. Looking down at the coffin in the grave, Raoul thought back to the last time he had seen Pierre. In early spring after the last of the snow melted on the ground, out riding Banner on the prairie, alone, he'd come upon Pierre, also riding alone. They had stared at each other and passed without a word.

I didn't know then that was my last chance to speak to him.

Raoul's eyes traveled over the people standing by the grave. Auguste stood between Elysée and Nicole, looking down into the pit. It pleased Raoul to see that apparently Auguste had no idea what was about to happen to him.

But how could he be sure Auguste was unprepared?

Raoul looked over the heads of the mourners, and his heart beat faster with anticipation. There, across the flat prairie land, he saw tiny figures surrounding the château.

Raoul's fingernails dug into his palms as he clenched his fists to hold himself together. What if the secret had gotten out? If Auguste knew what was about to happen, he would surely have prepared some kind of counterattack. Indians were damned sly.

Père Isaac closed his prayerbook and put it into his coat pocket.

"This man whom we consign to American soil was, like so many of us, born on the other side of the ocean," he said. "He came of one of the oldest and noblest families of France, fleeing the Godless revolution that tormented their homeland, which was also my homeland. The de Marions gave themselves soul and body to this new land where they had to make their own way. Here titles and ancient lineage meant nothing."

Get on with it, dammit!

"God saw fit to try them sorely after they came here to Illinois. The mother of the family died in childbirth. A daughter died a horrid[153] death at the hands of Indians, and a son"—he gestured at Raoul, who stared back at him, keeping his face expressionless—"held captive, a slave, by Indians for two years."

It was good that Père