Savage Lands Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Clare Clark

  Map

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  1704: Before

  On the nineteenth . . .

  It was near . . .

  Gently, Elisabeth cradled . . .

  Many weeks were . . .

  She dreamed about . . .

  The first days . . .

  It was several . . .

  The child came . . .

  The next time . . .

  From the first . . .

  The women stood . . .

  That winter, when . . .

  Elisabeth crouched before . . .

  For Auguste Mobile . . .

  Every month of . . .

  It had been, . . .

  Is not man . . .

  When the commandant . . .

  When it was . . .

  No one thought . . .

  In the event . . .

  She could not . . .

  The girl returned . . .

  It was some . . .

  1719: After

  As was customary, . . .

  On the bluff . . .

  The room, pressed . . .

  The child inched . . .

  Auguste was late . . .

  ‘Mlle le Vannes, . . .

  Seventeen days later . . .

  It was late . . .

  And how is . . .

  It was not . . .

  After the jesuit . . .

  After a brief . . .

  The port at . . .

  They reached the . . .

  A messenger had . . .

  The savages came . . .

  On the fifth . . .

  He saw her . . .

  The next day, . . .

  The year drew . . .

  From the plantation . . .

  Elisabeth’s child was . . .

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  It is 1704 and, in the swamps of Louisiana, France is clinging on to its new colony with less than two hundred men. Into this hostile land comes Elisabeth Savaret, one of twenty-three women sent from Paris to marry men they have never met. With little expectation of happiness, Elisabeth is stunned to find herself falling passionately in love with her husband, infrantryman Jean-Claude Babelon.

  But Babelon is a dangerous man to love. Witness to Elisabeth’s devotion is another of his acolytes, Auguste, a young boy despatched to act as a go-between with the ‘redskins’. When both Elisabeth and Auguste find their love challenged by Babelon’s duplicity, the consequences are devastating.

  About the Author

  Clare Clark is the author of The Great Stink (longlisted for the Orange Prize) and The Nature of Monsters. Born in 1967, she graduated from Cambridge with a double first in History, and now lives in London with her husband and two children.

  ALSO BY CLARE CLARK

  The Great Stink

  The Nature of Monsters

  For Flora,

  my American girl

  Savage Lands

  Clare Clark

  Every man calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to; it is indeed the case that we have no other criterion of truth or right-reason than the example and form of the opinions and customs of our own country.

  Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

  – MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

  1704

  Before

  His majesty sends twenty girls to be married to the Canadians and to the other inhabitants of Fort Louis, in order to consolidate the colony. All these girls are industrious and have received a pious and virtuous education. Beneficial results to the colony are expected from their teaching their useful attainments to the Indian females. In order that none should be sent except those of known virtue and of unspotted reputation, His Majesty did entrust the bishop of Quebec with the mission of taking these girls from such establishments as, from their very nature and character, would put them at once above all suspicions of corruption. You will take care to settle them in life as well as may be in your power, and to marry them to such men as are capable of providing them with a commodious home.

  – ANNOUNCEMENT TO THE CONGREGATION OF FORT LOUIS,

  LOUISIANA, MARCH 1704

  ON THE NINETEENTH day of April in the year of Our Lord 1704, the Pélican, a recently captured Dutch vessel of some six hundred tons, weighed anchor and headed for the open sea. Elisabeth stood on the main deck with several of the other girls, her hand raised to shade her eyes as the spires and towers of La Rochelle dwindled against the horizon. It was a fine day, unseasonably warm, the storms of the past weeks washed clean from the sky. Above her the men hauled on ropes or hung like spiders from the rigging, shouting to one another above the sharp slap and crack of the sails, but for once none of the girls spoke, though Marie-Françoise de Boisrenaud reached out and took the hand of little Renée Gilbert, who swayed a little, lettuce pale. Though exorbitantly overloaded, the heavy-hipped ship slid smoothly through the unruffled water, her company of twelve attending gunboats fanned out behind her, the creamy wake unfolding from her stern like a wedding veil.

  It should have been over by now, her fate decided. With October barely a week old and a ship readied in Rochefort, the bishop had declared it probable that most of the girls would be settled by the new year. On the day that her godfather was to take her to Paris to meet the coach, she had stood in her attic bedroom, her hand on the iron latch of the window, gazing out through the rain-speckled glass at the crumpled clutter of roofs and chimneys heaped up against the smoke-grimed sky, and she had thought, When the leaves return I shall be married. Beyond the barricades of the weaving mills and the dyehouses, the bare trees ran through the sky like cracks in ice. The window frame was old and warped, the paint peeling in scabs. She ran her finger along the cold loop of the latch as the wind rattled the loose panes, and the draught made her shiver.

  From the shop her aunt called her name, her voice wilting on the last syllable. Elisabeth turned away from the window, holding her arms tight across her chest for warmth, but she did not answer. It seemed to her that though she was not yet gone, the room had accustomed itself already to her absence. The bed in the corner of the room had been stripped of its sheets and rugs, its drapes knotted up so that the mattress might be aired. The door to the press hung open, its shelves and compartments empty but for a few yellowed sheets of the paper her aunt insisted upon to prevent the stained wood from spoiling the linens. The ewer and basin with their pattern of faded forget-me-nots had been rinsed and wrapped and put away in the kitchen, and there was no fire laid in the small grate. Even the old writing desk was bare, its curved legs buckling as though they might give way without the steadying disorder of books and pamphlets and catalogues and papers that habitually crowded its surface. Elisabeth stroked its scarred top, tracing the grain of the wood with her finger. Though elaborately carved at the feet, the desk was the work of an unskilled woodsmith, its table insufficiently deep for its breadth, its fragile legs ill-suited to so sturdy a piece. Beside them the squat legs of the ladder-backed kitchen chair straddled the floor with the stolidity of a taverner on market day.

  Again Elisabeth heard her aunt calling for her and again she did not answer. Instead she pulled out the chair and sat down. The frayed rush seat had always been too high and it comforted her to feel the familiar press of the desk’s underside against her thighs. Sometimes, on those too few occasions when she contrived to sit here all day, she had undressed at night to find the shape of it printed in secret lines on her skin. The desk was shabby, ink-stained and scabbed with candle wax, it
s single splintery drawer split with age and clumsily nailed together, but she was filled with a sudden longing to take it. It was impossible, of course. Even if her aunt had agreed to such a notion, each of the twenty-three girls was permitted only a single trunk.

  Elisabeth had packed the books herself, taking out some of the heavier linens her aunt had selected from the shop. She did not tell her aunt. Her aunt thought like most women and considered a tablecloth or a set of handkerchiefs of considerably greater value than the words of La Rochefoucauld or Racine. If it had not been for her godfather, she would never have managed to accumulate even her own modest library. A respected merchant, Plomier Deseluse was no bibliophile, considering books a pitiable proxy for the pleasures of company and of cards, but he was both prosperous and good-hearted. When Elisabeth’s uncle had died, he had settled upon her a small allowance from which she might purchase what he referred to as the necessary niceties. It would, he said, serve her until she was of an age to be wed.

  ‘Elisabeth!’

  Elisabeth set her palms flat on the desk. There was an ink stain on the longest finger of her right hand, a pattern of freckles on the back of her left like the five on a die. Her hands at least she might take with her. She closed her eyes. Then she lowered her head and set her cheek upon the desk, inhaling its faint smells of old varnish and ink powder. The King would buy her books from henceforth. The arrangements had been brokered by the bishop, whose diocese of Quebec had recently been extended to contain the new settlement in Louisiana. In addition to her trousseau, each girl would receive a small stipend from His Majesty’s Ministry of the Marine to support her until she was married, for a period not to exceed one year. Deseluse considered the bargain to be more than reasonable. There were perhaps one hundred unmarried men in Louisiana, many in a position to support a wife. The girls would have their pick of them.

  Downstairs a door slammed.

  ‘For the love of peace, Niece, must I shout myself hoarse?’

  Without opening her eyes, Elisabeth raised her head a little. Her nose brushed the desk as, very lightly, she pressed her lips against its waxy surface. Then, unsettled by her own foolishness, she rose and walked quickly across the room. She did not turn round as she closed the door behind her and descended the stairs towards her aunt.

  Deseluse had been late. As her aunt hastened to greet him, her hands smoothing invisible creases from her skirts, Elisabeth watched the dark shape of his carriage beyond the swirled glass of the windows, heard the impatient jangle and slap of a horse shifting in its traces, the raised voice of a man objecting angrily to the obstruction. The afternoon had darkened, though it was hardly three o’clock, and the lamps were already lit, bright as coins in their buttery brass sconces. In their glow the long polished counter gleamed like a thoroughbred. Elisabeth leaned against the brass measure that ran the length of the counter, feeling its sharp edge press against her belly.

  She had loved this shop when first she had come to live here. Accustomed to the frugal plainness of her father’s home, she had thought herself awoken in a jewel box. She had gazed in wonder as her aunt took down the heavy bolts of silk and velvet and gossamer mousseline, billowing them out so that her customers might appreciate their fineness, the grace of their fall. Along one wall of the shop were tiny drawers containing buttons of every shape and hue, buttons of shell and bone and polished metal and every shade of coloured glass that flashed like firecrackers when you held them in the light. She had not known there were so many colours in the world. Sometimes, when she was supposed to be working on her sewing, she had crept into the shop and hidden beneath the counter, aching to dip her hands into the rattling drawers of buttons and throw them into the air, to pull great spools of colour from the reels of ribbons and trimmings and threads so that she might fill the air with their brilliant patterns. She had not thought then that it was possible to be oppressed by the ceaseless cram of colour and stuff, that sometimes, when the day was ended, she would desire only to slip into the lane behind the shop and tip her head back, restored to herself by the grimy grey pallor of approaching dusk.

  ‘Elisabeth, my dear.’

  Plomier Deseluse stepped into the shop, shaking the wet from his shoulders like a dog. His wig, bulky and horned in the old-fashioned style, glinted with rain. Elisabeth bobbed a curtsy, inclining her head.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Come out from behind there and let me kiss you. It is not every day that I despatch a ward of mine to be married.’

  Elisabeth’s smile stiffened as, obediently, she stepped out into the shop and allowed her godfather to embrace her. He smelled of claret and wet wool.

  ‘Officially I suppose you are now a ward of the King or some such, but we should not let such formalities prevent a fond farewell.’ He took a large handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly into it. ‘This is your box?’ Leaning out into the damp lane, he gestured at the coachman to load the trunk onto the back of the carriage. When the door clicked shut behind him he shivered. ‘Wretched miserable weather.’

  ‘Please, come warm yourself by the fire,’ Elisabeth’s aunt said hastily. ‘May I bring you some tea? A little port wine?’

  Deseluse shook his head.

  ‘We should leave directly.’ He nodded at Elisabeth. ‘You are ready?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then let us be off. The roads are hardly safe in darkness.’ He bowed to Elisabeth’s aunt. ‘Good day, Madame. My wife wished me to tell you that she shall call on you tomorrow. It seems a woman can never have enough dresses.’

  Elisabeth’s aunt bared her teeth in a smile. Her teeth were yellow, a slightly darker shade than her complexion.

  ‘I hope, sir, that you too shall come back and see us, though Elisabeth is gone. We should be most obliged.’

  ‘Yes, yes, well, I am sure,’ Deseluse said and he gave his shoulders another brisk shake. ‘Now, Elisabeth, you are ready?’

  Elisabeth looked at the smooth gleam of the counter, at the bolts of cloth stacked on their deep shelves, and she thought of the long afternoons when she had thought she might die of the dullness of it. On the wall her shears hung from their blue ribbon, their blades slightly parted. Her fingers twined together, the tips hard against the points of her knuckles.

  ‘Come along, now,’ urged her aunt.

  Slowly Elisabeth turned. The door was open and outside the rain flurried in petulant squalls. Pulling up the hood of her cape, she touched her lips to her aunt’s yellow cheek.

  ‘Godspeed, Niece, and may God bless you.’

  ‘Farewell, Aunt.’

  ‘Write and tell us how you find things. Your cousins shall be curious. Louisiana. Imagine.’

  ‘Imagine,’ Elisabeth echoed, and she rolled up her mind like a length of ribbon so that she might not.

  Of the twenty-three girls, seventeen would be travelling from Paris. Some of the girls had connections to the convents and missions of Paris; others, like Elisabeth, had been proposed to the bishop by patrons of his acquaintance. Twenty-three girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, girls of high moral character, not all of them well-born, but all raised in virtue and in piety, fine stock from which to breed a new France in the New World.

  Twenty-three girls who might otherwise never be wed.

  She knew only that the men of Louisiana were mostly soldiers or civilian officials in the pay of the King. Some were Canadian, the rest French. One of these men would become her husband. She had signed a contract to make it so. For fifteen sols a day and a trunk of linen and lace, she had sold herself into exile, property of the King of France until, in a savage land on the other side of the world, a man she had never met might take her in marriage, a man of whom she knew nothing, not even his name.

  If such a fate was preferable to the future that had beckoned her in Saint-Denis, married according to the arrangements of her aunt or confined to repeat forever the same dreary day behind the counter of the mercer’s shop, there was poor comfort in it. It was
miserable to be a grown woman, more miserable still to be a grown woman with neither the funds nor the affections a grown woman must have at her disposal if she was to contrive her own future. As a child Elisabeth had liked to lie on her belly beneath the table in the kitchen, a book on the floor before her. It was warm in the kitchen and friendly. She had lain beneath the table and the words in the book and the hiss of the fire and the grunts and slaps above her as Madeleine kneaded the dough for bread had wrapped themselves around her like a blanket, muffling time. When it was dinner the old servant had been obliged to bend over, her breath coming in short puffs as she threatened to sweep Elisabeth from her hiding place with her sharp-bristled broom. Elisabeth had laughed then and tickled Madeleine behind her fat knees and thought how, when she was a woman, she would make her home under a table where the world was all stories and swollen ankles.

  Then her father had died and Madeleine had gone and Elisabeth had been sent to live with her father’s sister in Saint-Denis. In her aunt’s house there were boys and wooden crates under the kitchen table where her aunt kept the china, wrapped carefully against breakage. Elisabeth was ten then and hardly a girl at all. Her aunt required her to work in the shop during the day, or to help with the house. Elisabeth read at night beneath a candle that guttered in the midnight draught from the window. Sometimes, when she lay down to sleep, the night sky had already begun to curl up at the edges, exposing the grey-pink linings of the day, and she could hear the heavy wheels of the vegetable wagons as they rumbled down the lane. Her aunt complained about the candles and rebuked Elisabeth for yawning in the shop, but the old woman was weary too and her heart was not in it.

  A husband was another matter. When she was married, Elisabeth thought, even the nights would not be her own.

  The box was large and flat, tied about with string. At his master’s instruction, the coachman set it on the table in the main parlour of the coaching inn. Though the taverner had informed them that several of the other girls were already arrived, the room was empty and ill-lit. The fire in the grate smoked and beneath the choke of it the inn smelled strongly of soup and spilled brandy.