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Read books online » Fiction » Shaman by Robert Shea (nice books to read TXT) 📖

Book online «Shaman by Robert Shea (nice books to read TXT) 📖». Author Robert Shea



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more chairs," Frank said. "We can talk in here. The old gentleman is sound asleep now. Could you use a drop of brandy, Auguste?"

Auguste nodded. "That might ease the pain." He thought not only of the pain from the rifle blow, but of the pain in his heart from having lost Victoire despite his promise to his father. And the pain of tearing himself away from Nancy.

He and Frank quietly removed chairs from the other upstairs rooms where the Hopkins children were sleeping. Frank went down to the kitchen and came back with a tray bearing three small bowl-shaped crystal glasses and a cut-glass decanter that twinkled in the lamplight.

"Handsome glassware," Auguste said, seating himself and carefully setting his backpack between his feet.

"From the time of Louis the Fifteenth," Nicole said. "One of the things Papa brought over from the old château in France. And he gave it to Frank and me as a wedding present. At least Raoul won't get his hands on this."

Auguste said, "But Raoul has everything else, because father left it all to me. I told him he should will it to you; I should have insisted." His face burned with shame.

Frank said, "I doubt we'd have held onto the estate any longer than you did. And, frankly, I don't want it any more than you do. I don't know how Nicole feels."

Now that the land was irrevocably lost to him, Auguste was no longer so sure that he did not want it. He twisted in his chair, angry at himself for his uncertainty.[177]

Nicole shook her head. "I'm a wife and mother. I'm not prepared to be a châtelaine. Especially when I'd have to fight that—that beast."

As Frank poured an inch of the warm amber liquid into each of their glasses, Auguste noticed that his fingers were, as always, blackened. He must never get the stains of his trade off his hands.

Frank said, "I'm going to write in the Visitor about what happened today, tell what I saw, so the whole county will know what happened."

Auguste looked at Nicole. He saw fear in her eyes, but she said nothing.

"Why write about it?" Auguste said. "Raoul would do some harm to you. And it would change nothing. I won't even be here to read it." The last thing he wanted was these people, whom he cared about, getting into trouble because of him.

Frank smiled faintly. "You know that unlike just about every other man in Smith County, I don't carry a gun." He pointed downward, in the direction of the press on the floor below them. "That's my way of fighting."

For a moment Auguste felt ashamed that he was running away from that same fight.

"Because you stood by me today my heart will always sing your praises. Do you think my father's spirit will be sad if I do not stay and fight for the land until I die?"

"You almost did die, Auguste," Nicole said.

And I might yet, before I get away from here.

He sipped the brandy. It burned his tongue and his throat and lit a fire in his belly. It made him feel stronger.

Frank said, "Nobody's saying you should stay. I don't want to see you killed."

Nicole said, "Neither would your father. Pierre wanted you to have the estate, but he didn't want you dead on account of it."

"Amen to that," said Frank.

Yes, Auguste thought, despising himself, but I think he expected me to keep the land for more than a day.

Frank went on, "But if you go back to your people, you've got to tell them—they can no more fight the United States for their land than you could fight Raoul."

A fierce heat rose in Auguste as he took another sip of brandy.[178] "At St. George's School I read that the Indian does not make good use of the land. The whites need the land. Therefore the Indian must yield." He clenched his fist around the glass in his hand. "We were living on this land! Doesn't that mean anything?"

Frank said, "Auguste, you know better than any of your people how much power the United States have. You've got to tell them."

Auguste was silent for a moment.

The long knives, he thought. That was what his people called the American soldiers. But the British Band had no idea how very many long knives there were. He must make Black Hawk understand.

He sipped a little more of the brandy, and its fire flowed through his blood.

He sighed and nodded. "I will tell them. Frank, I need a boat."

Nicole said, "Your eyelids are drooping, Auguste. You're tired and you're still hurt. You can't go tonight."

True. And he wanted to stay long enough to see Grandpapa when he was awake.

Auguste's last memory that night was of letting Frank lead him across the corridor into a darkened bedroom, where he fell face down on an empty bed.

When he came to himself again, he was lying on the same bed, still fully clothed except for his boots. The room was not as dark as he remembered; it was in a sort of twilight. The one window was shuttered. A curtain covered the doorway. He looked around the room, saw boys' clothing hanging on pegs and piled on the floor, another bed, covered with rumpled sheets, empty. His own boots and his pack were set neatly at the foot of his bed.

An urgent pressure inside told him he had been sleeping a long time. He saw a chamber pot in one corner. Smart of them to leave the pot here, he thought as he filled it. He didn't dare to go to their outhouse during daylight.

He went to the window and cautiously looked through the shutter. The window looked south, and he could not see the sun, only the black shadows it painted in the ruts of the road that slanted up the hill past the Hopkins house. It must be late afternoon.

He wondered, were Raoul and his men out there somewhere, looking for him? Would he live to see another nightfall?[179]

His head ached less than it had last night—until he touched it. Then the pain was like someone pounding a nail into his brain. The bump felt as big as a hen's egg.

Opening his backpack, he took out his leather medicine bag and drew out the stones one by one, rubbing his fingers over each. He opened his shirt and touched the tip of the bear's claw to the five scars on his chest.

Then, on impulse, he touched it to the old scar on his cheek.

A black leather bag contained his surgical instruments—two saws, a big one for legs and a smaller one for arms; four scalpels; lancets for bleeding; a turnkey for pulling teeth; a probe and tongs for removing bullets; a small jar of opium. Any of those things might be needed, where he was going.

Last, he took out a book, chosen almost at random from his small collection. On the spine of its brown leather cover was stamped in gold: "J. Milton. Paradise Lost."

Reverend Hale had recommended that he take a Bible. This long poem giving the Christian account of creation was the next thing to a Bible. But he had read it at St. George's and enjoyed it. And its title and its story of Adam and Eve being driven out of the Garden of Eden made him think of how he was dispossessed. Perhaps he would find some wisdom or guidance in the book.

Today he thought, Paradise lost? It may be that I'm returning to paradise.

But then he remembered how Nancy had wanted to "know" him as Adam knew Eve. He was leaving behind what might have been a great happiness.

He opened the book and read the first verse his eye fell upon:

High on a Throne of Royal State, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show'rs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,
Satan exalted sat ...

Sounded like Raoul, with his fifty Spanish dollars and his steamboat and lead mine and trading post. Raoul was better fitted to be Satan than to be the angel at the gates of Eden keeping sinners away.[180]

He heard voices nearby. One, faint but unmistakable, was Grandpapa's. His heart leaped. He quickly repacked his treasures.

He pushed the curtain aside and hurried across the hall. It was a joy to see Elysée's eyes looking at him, open and bright.

"I do not as a rule believe in miracles," Elysée said, smiling at Auguste, "but it's certainly a miracle that you could charge a man pointing a pistol at your chest and come out with nothing but a bump on your head."

"It's a bad enough bump, Grandpapa," said Auguste, dragging over the chair he had sat in last night and pulling it close to the side of the bed. "I wish I could stay and doctor you."

"Our local midwife says I too will heal," said Elysée. "I can move all my arms and legs without extreme pain. I think the worst injury was to my hip." He touched his right side gently. "I bruised it when I fell. There's swelling there, but I can move my leg. The hip is not broken." He closed his eyes, and Auguste knew that the old man was feeling a sharper pain in his heart than in his bones. "You must not think of staying here. I am afraid Raoul is perfectly capable of murdering you."

One son dead, the other an enemy. And now I must leave him. How much more can he stand?

Nicole was sitting beside Elysée's bed, just as she had been last night when Auguste arrived. He wondered whether she had slept.

Nicole smiled at him. "I sent the children down to play by the river. Having two injured adults to care for has been very restful for me."

Elysée sat up a little straighter, Nicole quickly plumping the pillows behind him, and turned a sharp, blue-eyed stare at Auguste.

"Nicole and Frank told me about your plan to go back to the Sauk. I can understand why you would wish to do so, but that is not the only choice open to you. You might consider going where people are much more civilized than they are around here—back East, where you were educated. Emilie and Charles would be happy, I am sure, to take you in again for a time. And I could help you. I have money banked with Irving and Sons on Wall Street. You could continue your education and follow the medical profession in New York."

Wishing he did not have to refuse the old man, Auguste said, "Grandpapa, I must go to the only other people I love in the world as much as I love you and Aunt Nicole."[181]

Elysée uttered a little sigh. "I understand. Loyalty pulls you back to your mother's people. It is a family trait. I suppose your father must have told you about the mystery around the origin of our family name."

"Yes, Grandpapa." Wanting him to know his French forebears, Pierre had spent hours with Auguste recounting their names and deeds. And he had told him that, strangely, the de Marion records extended back only to the late thirteenth century, though the family was wealthy and powerful even then. According to a murky legend, one ancestor had committed treason against the King, and that one's son had deserted his wife and children, simply disappeared. Feeling the original name, whatever it had been, irreparably tarnished, the first recorded Count de Marion had destroyed all record of it—apparently with the approval and help of the royal authorities—and had taken his mother's family's name instead. The story had left Auguste wishing he could use his shaman's powers to learn more, but he doubted that the Sauk spirits could see clear across the ocean.

Elysée said, "We de Marions sometimes display an overabundance of loyalty, as if we were still trying to expiate that ancient guilt."

Puzzled, Auguste said, "There's nothing wrong with loyalty, is there?"

"Certainly not. But remember this—if I had let loyalty keep me in France, we would not be here in this primeval paradise."

He sees this land as a paradise too. But it has not been kind to him.

"Looking back, Grandpapa, do you think you would have done better to have stayed in France?"

Elysée laughed, a short, humorless bark. "Not at all. I would almost certainly have lost my head to Dr. Guillotine's wonderful invention. Our lands would have been confiscated, and that would have been the end of the family."

"But now, with most of the wealth in Raoul's hands—"

Elysée raised a hand and shook his head. "This is not the end. I do not believe in divine intervention, but I do believe there is

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