Shaman Part 14

"Raoul!" It was Eli Greenglove's voice.

His eyes adjusted, and he could see Eli, Hodge Hode and Levi Pope standing at the entrance to the side tunnel. They looked at the body at his feet and the b.l.o.o.d.y knife in his hand, and then up at him and their eyes were wide and their lips parted.

_Those looks are worth as much to me as this whole mine._

"You really chopped him into mincemeat," Eli said. "I'll have to get me one of them Arkansas toothpicks."

"Get the other two bodies in here," Raoul said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. "We'll find some place to bury them."

"Better search the whole mine, make sure there's no more redskins," said Eli.

Raoul agreed, but he felt certain this one he'd killed was the only one in the mine. He looked down at the dead face. The Indian wasn't much more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Good, he thought. Hadn't had long enough to do much harm.

But why, Raoul wondered, had this young buck thrown his life away attacking him near the entrance to the mine? He'd have had more of a chance of escaping if he'd hidden deeper.

Maybe he'd figured there was at least a little light to see and fight by near the entrance. If he'd gotten Raoul, then somehow managed to get away, he'd probably have claimed the right to wear a brave's feather.

The thought of himself lying dead in the dark and his scalp hanging on a pole in front of a lodge down at Saukenuk made Raoul shudder.

But it was Raoul who'd won his feather. No Indian would ever kill Raoul de Marion.

And any redskin s.l.u.ts, and any mongrel b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, that showed their face around Victoire would have to deal with a man who killed Indians as easily as he killed any other sort of vermin.

Time to have it out with Pierre.

Pierre wanted to weep as he saw what was about to happen. He rushed forward and thrust out his hand to stop Raoul.

"Not the vase!" he cried. Maman had loved it so.

Raoul was too close to the mantel for Pierre to reach him in time. He got to it in two strides and, just as Pierre had expected, seized the vase that had been in the family for four generations, had stood on the mantel ever since they built this chateau.

"Raoul!" Papa cried. "Think what you are doing!"

Raoul turned, holding the vase high over his head. He fixed Pierre with the wide-eyed stare of a madman. His teeth flashed under his black mustache in a grimace of fury.

He dashed the vase to the flagstone floor. The white egg shape vanished with a hollow crack, and shards scattered, some hitting Raoul's boots, others flying into the huge stone hearth.

A sudden silence filled the great hall of Victoire. Pierre felt as if his heart had broken with the vase.

_You killed Maman_, he wanted to cry out, _now you would kill the memory of her_.

But he held his tongue and hated himself for even thinking what he had almost said. What an evil thought! How could he blame Raoul because Maman died giving birth to him?

_Think what you are doing!_ Papa had cried. That was precisely what Raoul never did. Thought was for afterward, for escaping the consequences of his actions. Now he had worked himself into a rage, lost all governing of himself, because, somehow, he had heard about Sun Woman and Gray Cloud.

Pierre had to try to win Raoul over, to find a way to break through the anger that divided him from his younger brother. Raoul had to be persuaded that it was only right that Sun Woman and the boy be brought here to Victoire. If Raoul did not accept that, his rage would tear their family apart.

But how, in one afternoon, batter down a wall that had been building over the past dozen years?

Pierre realized that he was still standing with his hand held out to Raoul. He lowered it slowly, feeling his shoulders slump at the same time. He had been reading with Papa when Raoul came in. Now he took off his spectacles, put them in the silver case that hung from his neck by a velvet cord and dropped the case in his vest pocket.

Elysee de Marion clutched the arms of his leather wing chair with clawlike hands, half rising from it. Raoul stood staring at the two of them, panting and trembling.

Elysee said quietly, "Why did you do that, Raoul?"

"To make you listen." Raoul's voice was deep and strong, and it resounded powerfully against the beamed ceiling and stone walls of the great hall. But in its tones Pierre heard the screams of that hysterical boy whose tantrums and nightmares, after they'd finally succeeded in ransoming him from the Potawatomi, had wrenched the hearts of the whole household and renewed their grief over the loss of Helene.

But now that painfully thin, frightened child was a broad-shouldered man over six feet tall with a knife as big as a broadsword and a pistol strapped to his waist. A very dangerous man. A man who, they said, had killed half a dozen or more opponents in fights up and down the Mississippi.

"We have been listening," Elysee said.

"Pierre hasn't," Raoul said resentfully. "_You_ tell him, Papa. Tell him he'd better leave his d.a.m.ned squaw in the woods where she belongs."

_d.a.m.ned squaw._ The words pierced Pierre's chest like arrows.

Elysee sat back down in his wing chair and stroked his jaw. He looked like an old turkey c.o.c.k, with fierce eyes, a hooked nose and a long, wrinkled neck. The leather-bound copy of Montaigne's essays that had been lying in his lap had slipped to the floor to join newspapers piled around his feet like autumn leaves, a mixture of local papers like Frank Hopkins's _Victor Visitor_, and the Galena _Miners Journal_, months-old papers from the East--the _New York Evening Post_, the _Boston Evening Transcript_, the _National Intelligencer_ from Washington City, the even older copies of _Mercure de France_ from Paris.

"Come here, both of you," Elysee sighed.

Hoping his father could reconcile them where he had failed so dismally, Pierre went to stand before Elysee's chair. After a moment's hesitation Raoul approached too. But Pierre saw that he was pointedly keeping more than an arm's-length distance between the two of them.

Elysee said, "That's better. I can't see you when you stand far from me.

These eyes are good for very little but reading, and when I can no longer read, I will shoot myself. And if I cannot see well enough to load the pistol, one of you must do it for me."

As he often did, Elysee was attempting to use humor to put out the fire.

Pierre glanced at Raoul to see if their father had drawn a smile from him. But Raoul stood with arms folded across his chest, his mouth hidden under his black mustache, his eyes narrowed. Except when he smiled--and today he was far from any smiling--the mustache made him look perpetually angry.

"Raoul," Elysee said. "Be a.s.sured that we are listening to you. Tell us what has driven you to destroy one of our family treasures."

"Just because Pierre soiled himself with a squaw," Raoul demanded, "do we have to live with what came of it?"

Pierre felt his face burn. He wanted to slap Raoul.

_My life with Sun Woman was as honorable as my life with Marie-Blanche._

He forced himself to control his temper. If he became as angry as Raoul was, this day would surely be the ruin of the house of de Marion.

Pierre felt a sudden twinge of pain in his belly. He fought down an urge to rub himself there. He wanted no one to know about his illness. Worse than the pain was the fear it brought on, the chilling suspicion that he was a dying man.

Fearfully he wondered what death would be like. Though Pere Isaac said such notions were foolish, he could not help seeing G.o.d the Father as an enormous white-bearded judge, seated among the clouds. And what would the Father's sentence be if Pierre de Marion turned his back on a wife and a son?

He wished he could tell Raoul that he thought he was dying. Then perhaps his brother would understand why he had to do his duty to Sun Woman and the boy. But he feared that if Raoul was aware of his weakness, he would try to take over the whole estate at once.

Praying that his brother would understand, he said, "Ever since Marie-Blanche died, I have been thinking of Sun Woman. After five years of life together, I left her and our little son. Lately I have been seeing her and my son, Gray Cloud, in dreams. I know G.o.d wants me to make amends to them."

Pierre felt sweat break out on his forehead and upper lip. Why must Raoul stir up such turmoil with his hatred? Couldn't Raoul understand that not all red people were like the ones he had encountered? Pierre saw Sun Woman in his mind, so strong and wise, holding the hand of their grave, brown-eyed boy. How beautiful they were.