Isle of Canes

Praise for Isle of Canes

"This is Gone with the Wind from a vastly different, more important perspective . . . not that of the plantation owner or the poor white . . . but homme de couleur libre and slave. Mills skillfully weaves historical events into the story . . . capturing the agonizing decisions which tore families and communities apart. Fully realized characters break the mold we have come to expect of the South."

—Contemporary Lit

"To call it a historical novel cheats its range, depth, and meaning. Isle of Canes gets inside the skin of being black and not black at the same time, showing the world of slavery, race, and Southern life from a new and unexpected point of view."

—Randall Miller (Dear Master: Letters of a Slave Family), Sesquicentennial Chair of History, St. Joseph’s University

In language that flows like poetry . . . issues of race and social standing are portrayed with an honesty that is rare in southern literature.

—City Social Magazine

A must read! Mills intensely explores multiracial America and the struggle to find a place in this tightly defined world of black and white.

—Rolling On

Mills is a master story teller, bringing to vivid life untold pieces of our country’s history.

—Lalita Tademy, author of New York Time Best Seller Cane River, an Oprah’s Book Club Selection

Isle of Canes

A Historical Novel

Elizabeth Shown Mills

Copyright © 2006

Elizabeth Shown Mills

Published by

Ancestry Publishing, a division of

The Generations Network, Inc.

360 West 4800 North

Provo, UT 84604

Hardcover edition 2004

Paperback edition 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages for a review.

All brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Cover Photos:

Melrose courtesy of Guillette Photography,

Natchitoches, Louisiana. Used with permission.

Cane River courtesy of Jennifer Browning. Used with permission.

Portrait of Marie Carmelite Melite Anty, oil on canvas, painted ca. 1836 by Feuille. Photograph courtesy of Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Watson Memorial Library, Cammie G. Henry Research Center. Used with permission.

Printed in the United States of America.

The Library of Congress has already cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Mills, Elizabeth Shown.

Isle of Canes / by Elizabeth Shown Mills.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-59331-306-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN 13 978-1-59331-306-7

1. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 2. Louisiana—Fiction. 3. Islands—Fiction. 4. Creoles—Fiction. 5. Racism—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.I568I85 2004

813’.54—dc22

2004000055

To

Family

Theirs, mine, and all of ours.

Family is our beginning and our end. It is who we are and why we are. Amid its roots we can find an understanding of the problems our world has inherited, and amid the intertwining of its branches we can see hope for a better world in the generations to come.

Publisher’s Note

The story that follows is a real one, well known to tens of thousands of Americans whose roots go back to the Isle of Canes—and to a myriad of others who have been lured there, once or often, by the Isle’s fabled heritage. Every effort has been made to present the lives of the Islanders as accurately as possible. Due to the complexity of documented detail and the sheer size of the family involved, some simplification of circumstances and timeline has been necessary. However, the reader may be assured that the historical integrity of all events and characters has been respectfully preserved.

Contents

Illustrations

Foreword

The Families

Prologue

Circa 1900

The Memory-Keeper

Part 1

1742–1758

The Promise

Part 2

1765–1781

The Price

Part 3

1788–1816

The Planting

Part 4

1816–1856

The Reaping

Part 5

1859–1876

The Reaving

Epilogue

Circa 1900

The Rekindling

A Note about Sources

About the Author

Illustrations

p. 9 Augustin’s Manor.

p. 12 Baptism of Marie Thérèse dite Coincoin, 1742.

p. 14 St. François Church, 1738.

p. 47 Fort St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches.

p. 247 The Isle of Canes and Cane River

from Grande Ecore to Le Court’s Bluff.

p. 343 Coincoin’s cabin.

p. 368 Yucca House.

p. 396 Portrait of Nicolas Augustin Metoyer, f.m.c.

p. 416 Louis Metoyer’s African House.

p. 418 Melrose, Louis Metoyer’s Big House.

p. 420 Portraits of Auguste Metoyer

and wife Marie Carmelite Melite Anty.

p. 495 Joseph Emanuel Dupré Sr., C. S. A. Militiaman,

Augustin’s Mounted Guards.

p. 567 Perine Metoyer and Joseph Dupré.

p. 577 Augustin’s Final Home.

Foreword

Cane River stole my heart in 1970. As a young wife and mother, I went there to find my children’s roots, never suspecting that a bout of curiosity would turn into a lifelong love affair.

I found its people to be a puzzle. Cloutiers, Derbannes, Duprés, La Cours and Le Courts, Lecomtes, Prudhommes, and Rachals. They came in many shades. They gave their children the same names. They worshipped in the same churches but, curiously, in different wings—one for whites, one for blacks, and one for those considered to be neither. They shared not only the same river but the same records, challenging modern researchers to sort them out. Among them, like the glue that held them all together, lived the Metoyers, a family that intrigued me although I could find no place for them on our family charts.

Cane River fever spread within our household. My husband, a young historian, was duly cautioned by his department head not to get involved with genealogy or his career would be ruined—a warning common to the era but one he proceeded to ignore. My mother-in-law took me back to Cloutierville and taught me the way her people thought—they and the neighbors who shared their lives and some of the same ancestral lines. As I gathered their stories and struggled to chart out their connections on mammoth rolls of newsprint, my three-year-old joined me on the floor to write Rachals, as she put it. Her affinity for that family name was not surprising. It was the one we had, perhaps with premonition, given her at birth.

In 1972, my hobby became a profession. The Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches had been gifted with the estate grounds of a plantation steeped in lore and wracked with controversy. If legend could be believed, it dated to the colonial era, during which it had been founded by a freed slave woman variously known as Marie Thérèse or Coincoin. My charge was to document its history. The hope was to earn a slot on the National Register of Historic Places. As often was the case, the legend strayed here and there from the facts of history, like partners in a waltz who touch and twirl together then swing away to tease and flirt with others before coming back into each other’s arms. Yet the story that emerged from thousands of records scattered across six nations, was even more incredible. By the time the project ended, the fabled plantation actually founded by Coincoin’s son Louis—and known now as Melrose on the Cane—was proclaimed a National Historic Landmark.

Even then, Cane River and its Isle still held the Millses in their grip. Bridging the traditional divide between academic and family history, my husband adopted the Isle for his doctoral dissertation. The parish of Natchitoches continued to be our other home, and the Metoyers who carved a civilization out of the canebrakes became our adopted family. Inevitably, Gary’s career would take him elsewhere, but mine would stay rooted along that mystic river.

Gary’s dissertation, which Louisiana State University Press published in 1977 as The Forgotten People: Cane River’s Creoles of Color, reconstructs the socio-

economic history of the Isle from the naked bones of the documentary record. Beyond those bones, however, there was a heart throbbing with family stories left untold, a soul formed by the society that spawned rich traditions, and the flesh of historical context that was colored by all the families with whom the Metoyers lived, worked, loved, and feuded. Here now, in the Isle of Canes, the heart, soul, flesh, and bones are made one.

Three decades of research on any subject leave one owing many debts. The first and greatest is surely to the late Arthur Chopin Watson who, as legal counsel to the Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches, persuaded me to take on that research project in 1972 and then opened doors that neither Gary nor I might have entered on our own. The guidance, hospitality, and support of Arthur, his wife Gene Hickman Watson, and their friends—particularly Eddie and Jean Mahan—were priceless. Over the years, Carol Wells and John Price of the Watson Library, Northwestern State University; Irby Knotts, his staff, and their successors at the Natchitoches Parish Courthouse; a succession of priests in all the parishes; the late Lee Etta Vaccarini Couti, Lewis E. and Gloria Sers Jones, and Tillman and Armeline Roque Chelettre of the Isle; Dr. Harlan Mark Guidry of Houston; and the Natchitoches historian and preservationist Robert B. DeBlieux were all valuable touchstones. Amid this year’s whirlwind schedule of production, Northwestern’s Mary Linn Wernet, who heads the Cammie G. Henry Research Center, and Sonny Carter, the Center’s digital imaging specialist, surely worked overtime to share the Center’s artwork for the book’s final design. Beyond that treasure trove of history, all who share my fascination with Cane River’s past are blessed to have a new resource at their disposal, Northwestern’s Louisiana Creole Heritage Center, ably run by two professionals deeply rooted in the Isle, Janet Colson and Louise Llorens.

And now, as I write finis upon this labor of love, I owe my final thanks to Ancestry, its officers, and its editors—to Loretto Dennis Szucs, vice-president of publishing, who believed in this story from the start; to Tom Stockham, president and CEO of Ancestry’s parent company MyFamily.com, and André Brummer, its senior vice president of product, who found within these pages a world they did not know or expect, and then understood why this story needed telling; and to Matt Wright, Jennifer Utley, Rob Davis, and the other members of the Ancestry editorial and graphics team who gently but wisely helped me shape the final manuscript.

To these friends, to their offspring and my own, and to all who now give me an irreplaceable part of their lives—that is, the hours they spend in reading the Isles of Canes—I offer this story in hopes it helps to create a better understanding and a keener appreciation of the rich, complex, and often-conflicting cultures that have shaped America.

—Elizabeth Shown Mills

The Families

The First Generation

François and Fanny

The African artisan and his princess, captured into slavery and brought to the wilds of Louisiana in 1735. He accepted their fate and insisted that she accept it, too.

The Second Generation

Coincoin

Beautiful, talented, and fiery, she swore over the dead bodies of her parents that one day their family would be free, rich, and proud. She kept her vow.

The Third Generation

Augustin

Half-African, half-French, he ruled over the Isle of Canes as patriarch of a legendary colony of creoles de couleur who lived in pillared mansions yet toiled beside the 500 slaves who tilled their 18,000 acres.

The Fourth Generation

Perine

Born to riches, she died in shame; but she never forgot the heritage of her family or the brutal Civil War that destroyed it. Through the persecutions of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, hers was a different vow: Never would her family forget who they were, until the day came that they could—and would—reclaim their pride and their Isle. She, too, kept her promise.

Prologue

Circa 1900

Memory-Keeper

Prologue

Circa 1900

A pall, as insensible as death itself, gripped the crowd that ringed the old plantation manse. Walls quivered and flames belched through scores of broken panes as the inferno caged inside Augustin Manor threatened to explode two solid feet of massive brick laid by long-forgotten slaves. Then a rumble rose deep from the belly of the relic and its inner walls collapsed, taking with them floors of parqueted hardwood that once had shone like Cane River under an August moon. The mansion from which the Isle of Canes had once been ruled would see no more balls, no more satin slippers, no more upswept curls coiled around tea roses and hibiscus blossoms. Tonight only the flames danced, reddening the evening sky with frenzied sweeps and bows in mockery of the fais-do-dos of those who had lived inside those walls, and the hoedowns of those who had lived and labored on its lands.

Above the rumbling, seething crackle, a baby’s wail pierced the miasma. Somewhere a man laughed nervously, shucking some edge of remorse he was not used to feeling.

Good riddance! he muttered. That dilapidated eyesore should have been pulled down a long time ago. Around him some faces stared, masking the hostility they dared not show, but most murmured their assent.

The spell was broken. Here and there a few somber figures clustered, cemented by memories they shared but could not speak. In other circles, hushed whispers turned to chatter and the coup de grâce of the old showplace became just another spectacle—a brief reprieve to the restlessness that cankered this stretch of river where newcomers and their ways had displaced all that was sacred.

In the moss-draped shadows of the live oak that had reigned as long as she remembered, an old woman stood mutely planted, with a slender stripling of a lad clutching at her gnarled hands.

Tante Perine?

She did not seem to hear him. For her, for just this moment, there was no crowd, no callous chitchat, just the tinkle of laughter as children played Nip ’n

Tuck on Easter mornings. There was no inferno, but the coziness of a marble fireplace on chilly evenings as young ones gathered around Grandpère’s rocker and he wove a spell that swept them back to a different time when Louisiana belonged to France and Spain.

Look at that! A low voice came from somewhere outside the shadows. Perine heard the voice, but she could not put a face with it. It did not fit into her past.

Would you just look at that, Ada Bell? the voice repeated. That old darkie’s crying!

Perine’s reverie was broken. Ada Bell. Ada Bell Mackey. Perine knew all the Mackeys. Pain, real pain, sliced into the heart she thought this inferno would char forever.

Shhh. Ada Bell’s stage-whisper shushed her friend. " ’Course she’s crying, darling, but don’t call her a darkie!"

But I thought that’s what you Southerners called them.

"Oh, you ninny! That’s Tante Perine you’re talking about. She’s no darkie. She’s a Metoyer! "

A what?

"A Metoyer. They’re the people who built this place. That’s why she’s crying. She lived here when she was young—back before that war y’all started."

"We started? The stranger’s voice rose in pique, but then he laughed. You’ll not get me riled again, Ada Bell. I will just let that one pass. Still, I’ll admit I don’t understand you Southerners at all. Black or white. You talk like you despise each other, but at times you really seem to care. Here you are feeling sorry for that old woman, and there she is crying over the house of white folks who kept her a slave."

"Do what? A slave? Darling! Wherever did you go to school? No, don’t tell me! You already did. You went to one of those fancy places Up East where everybody goes but nobody learns anything—leastways, not about the South. Honey, I’ve just gotta sit you down and give you a history lesson!"

The stranger’s voice cut Ada Bell off with another low laugh. "But not now, dahlin’," he murmured. The moon is ripe and there’s a scent of magnolias all around us that even the smoke can’t hide…. His voice grew softer, huskier. Perine could not hear the rest of his words, just Ada Bell’s giggle.

Tante Perine? The little boy tried again. You alright, Tante Perine?

For a while, still, she was silent, immobilized by too many years and too many dreams that seemed gone forever, like Grandpère’s house now was. But then the ancient shoulders squared, her jaw jutted forward, and her eyes softened as they always did when little Gustin came around.

"Oui, cher. Come. Let’s go home, child. There is nothing we can do here."

They trudged along the moss-strewn road that wound down Cane River, the din of the crowd trailing off behind them. Again, it was Gustin who broke the silence.

"Tante Perine, why didn’t folks try t’ save it? When ol’ Mr. Mackey’s kitchen catched itself on fire las’ year, everbody lined up gettin’ water from the river. They put out his fire."

Perine groped for an answer, one the child could understand. Gustin was so full of questions no one liked to hear, much less answer. But, then, that was one of the reasons she loved this child so much more than any of the dozens who called her tante. It was not just that he was prettier. Sur ma foi! He was a beautiful boy, with skin the color of broth into which a bit of olive oil had been stirred and blue eyes that danced like cloud puffs on a breezy morn. He was smart, too, even though his grammar clearly showed that he spent far more time in the fields than the schoolroom.

Non, Gustin was different because he cared. More than any other child who carried the name Metoyer, he cared. When Perine looked at Gustin, she saw hope. All the fires and wars and droughts and floods and people God had sent to test them would never wipe out what used to be—what could be again—as long as it lived on in hearts like hers and young Gustin’s.

"Ah, mon cher, the old woman sighed as they turned up the narrow path that led to her little cabin. Grandpère’s house burned today because our people have lost hope and others just do not care. That is why the étrangers who own Grandpère’s land now let his house run down. It means nothing to them. That is why those there tonight made no move to put out the fire. They do not care either—or maybe they just do not know—how Grandpère’s door and Grandpère’s heart were open to everyone, even étrangers. You see, child, no one cares now about the way things used to be. Those outsiders, they have looked all these years at Grandpère’s Big House and they’ve seen just another relic, of no use for anything but firewood, taking up land on which they could plant more cotton."

Only her flip of the latch on the old iron gate, a bit more forceful than

it needed to be, betrayed the anger Perine tried to wash from her soul every Sabbath eve in St. Augustin’s confessional. Thirty years had passed since she had closed the door to Grandpère’s mansion-house, resolutely handed the key to that outsider who had paid the overdue taxes, and moved Grandpère’s best things through this little door she opened now for Gustin. Time had not eased the pain of that day, nor the feeling that she did not belong here, inside these walls that once had housed a family of their slaves. Non! This hut of bousillage with its baked-clay hearth was but a stage in time, a place to regroup—but never rest—until her family recovered the life that was their birthright.

But we coulda saved it, Tante Perine. There wuz lots o’ us there. I seen Oncle Pierre an’ François an’ Colas an’ cousin Noel an’….

Perine lit the old kerosene lamp that had stood so long on Grandpère’s bibliothèque, and by the flare of its light Gustin read his own answer in her weary face. Still, she answered him, carefully measuring her words while she rekindled enough coals to warm their supper.

"Gustin, your oncles, the old ones, they are losing hope. The older they get and the more time passes, the less they remember. The less they believe that things can be right for us again. And you young ones? Ah, cher! You children grow up knowing nothing but the way life is around you. Every time you have to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, ma’am’ to the Mackeys, it makes you forget that your blood is just as good. Or better.

"Non, child, it just does not seem real to any of you now when I tell you it is our Big House the Mackeys live in at Yucca Bend! It was ours before the Mackeys ever came to Natchitoches Parish or to the Isle. It could be ours again one day if we all set our minds to it."

"Wuz that what she used t’ say, Tante Perine?"

"Hehn? Who, child?"

Grandpère’s mother. The one you talked about t’other night to papa, when he tol’ you he wuz gonna start croppin’ for the Mackeys.

She could not stop it, the sudden rush of images that swept her back into Grandpère’s stories and turned her hoary two-room cabin into another. One that smelled, always, of gardenias, with wood shavings in a corner basket and a freshly carved doll or toy or trinket on the mantel waiting to surprise the next set of wee ones who stopped in to see their Mère Coincoin. Then the cabin grew and spread until it was Grandpère’s Big House and there was a life-sized doll

of crackled ebony, lifeless in a green sateen dress, lying in state in the middle of Grandpère’s big four-poster—the bed a distant forebear had once carved for his princess. But then the smell of gumbo, bubbling in the old iron kettle behind the hearth, chased away those memories and brought Perine back to the present.

"Oui, mon petit. Coincoin was her name, and that is what she taught us. We can be anything we want to be, do anything we want to do, if we believe. Grandpère believed, and he made himself the greatest man this Isle has ever known. You can, too. You have his name, child. You have his heart. You have that same way of staring into life head-on and searching for its answers."

What’d she look like, Tante Perine? Gustin persisted, once he emptied the bowl she had set before him. I see Grandpère’s big picture every time I come here, and I seen all the others ol’ Miz Mackey shows off to everbody like she done painted ’em all herself. But I ain’t never seed one for Coincoin. Did she look like them? Or you? Or me?

Perine smiled in spite of herself and shook her head. "Non, child. She was just as beautiful as you, but in a different way. Coincoin was as black as that little colt you helped your oncle foal last year—and just as frisky and bold. She was born a slave, but they could never make her feel like one. They could tie her up but they could not fence her in, because she was born to be free, just like your colt."

But he ran off…, the child began, a shadow flickering across his finely chiseled face.

"Oui, cher. He did. In that way, Coincoin was different, too. She would not run. She never ran from any person or any fight, and she taught her children not to, either. That is what we are all doing wrong now, child! We are running from our problems. We have given in. Too many of us have just plain given in!"

Perine’s old voice trembled from the weight of nearly a half-century of hurt and hunger. Heaving herself from the old rosewood chair that once graced Grandpère’s library, she began to clear the table—the cheap, pine slab that served as one. For the thousandth time, she chastised herself for giving in when Mrs. Mackey pleaded for Grandpère’s fine old mahogany table, shipped all the way from France, with its massive revolving tray built into the center. Another family treasure gone. And for a basket of store-bought food.

"Sur ma foi! Perine exclaimed, as much to herself as to the child. We have let the Mackeys and all their kind do it to us. Your oncles have, your papa and mama, even I have. But do not let them do it to you, cher! Do not settle for

what the world expects of darkies, as that man called us, when you know you are a Metoyer! Do not let yourself lose sight of all the good you can do for your people and the world itself. Coincoin never did! And her children never did. That is how the Metoyers became so great back before the war."

Even by the lantern light, she could see the fine blond hairs knit themselves across his slender brow. But how’d they do it, Tante? How’d Coincoin get free if’n she didn’t run ’way? An’ why didn’t she have to say ‘Yas’m’ to the Mackeys?

She almost smiled then, at the simpleness with which children see the world. As she wiped the crumbs of corn bread he had dropped from his plate, one gnarled hand, spotted with years, tousled his rumpled curls affectionately, reassuring herself as much as this boy before her.

"Ah, chien-chien! The Mackeys were not even here then. But there were others just like them."

Gustin’s eyes did not yield, and the old woman sighed. I am too old, she thought. No wonder the young ones do not understand me any more. I talk about worlds they have never known. Things they simply cannot imagine.

She wavered. He stared. And then, for an aching moment, life almost broke the soul of Marie Perine Metoyer Metoyer Dupré. Madame François Gassion Metoyer, she had once been to all who called at her door, hat in hand. The chatelaine of Augustin Manor. She, whose family owned and filled the front pews of the Church of St. Augustin, while the white planters and their wives rented the pews behind them. Indeed, that last was the memory that made the gravity of their fall almost more than even she could bear.

And so, Perine tossed her dishcloth down onto the old sideboard, turned her back on the pan of soapy dishes and a lifetime of habit, and settled into the old rocker that had been Grandpère’s and Coincoin’s before him. Making space beside her on the cushion she had patched a dozen times, she beckoned Gustin to join her.

"Come, cher. It is long past time for me to tell you about Coincoin and Grandpère and the Metoyers and this Isle that once was ours. Tonight, Gustin, you need to know—before the world turns you into what others want you to be, instead of what you are."

Augustin Manor

This sketch, made from a photograph taken shortly before its burning, depicts a home about 130 feet long by 80 feet deep, constructed of slave-made bricks, with walls two feet thick. By the ti

me this image was captured in the late-nineteenth century, the walls were crumbling and their original crown of cypress shingles had been supplanted by a roof of tin. Doors of carved oak and etched glass had been stripped and sold, replaced by cheap slabs and wire screens. Windows had been boarded, and the moss-draped oaks that once stood sentinel had been rooted from the soil so the estate grounds could be profitably planted in the South’s white gold.

Part One

1742–1758

The Promise

Baptism of Marie Thérèse dite Coincoin, 1742

Parish of St. François des Natchitoches

L’an mil sept cent quarante deux le vingt quatre août, je soussigné prêtre Capucin ai baptisé Marie Thérèse, Negritte appartenant à Mr. de St. Denis, Commandant de ce poste. Le parrain a été Mr. de Lachaise et la marraine Damoiselle Marie de St. Denis, en foi de quoi j’ai signé. Pr Arcange, Capucin.

In the year seventeen hundred and forty two, the twenty-fourth of August, I, the undersigned Capuchin priest, have baptized Marie Thérèse, an infant Negro girl belonging to Mr. de St. Denis, Commandant of this post. The godfather has been Mr. de la Chaise and the godmother, Demoiselle Marie de St. Denis. In testimony whereof, I have signed. Father Arcange, Capuchin.

St. François Church

Poste St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches

When Commandant Louis Juchereau de St. Denis inventoried church property on 9 May 1738, he described the chapel: Twenty feet long and twenty-four wide, built on nine foot logs, with double beams filled in between with mud. The same Church has six windows with shutters and iron work, a big double door with iron work, a small door with a lock. The said building is roofed with shingles on planks without fancy work. Everything being new. Also inventoried was the thirteen and a half pound bell, set up aside the church.

1

24 August 1742

In nómine Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti…

Through the stillness of the early morning, François could hear the prayers of Père Arcange droning to a close as they crossed the place d’armes and stopped before the door of the church. The infant stirred in his arms. Her small black face nudged hungrily against his breast, and he passed the child to its mother.

Dóminus vobíscum…

The ritual blessing of the priest wafted through the open doorway, and his flock softly responded et cum spíritu tuo.

François paced the stones that paved the entrance way, his body a stocky, tightly wound coil of steel-laced muscle. Again he felt it as he passed the open door, that uneasiness that nagged him every time he knelt at Sunday Mass with M’sieur’s family, every time Madame called her nègres and her children into her little chapel for their catechism. In seven winters François had learned the tongues these people spoke and all but forgotten his own, but the gods his grandfather taught him had not been replaced by the one these milk-white people bowed before.

Ite, Missa est. Vade in pace. The Mass is ended, go in peace.

Wooden rosaries clicked, skirts rustled, and the recessional began. A typical daily Mass, François mused, as the faithful filed through the broad double doorway. A dozen or so women, all aged, except for Madame and her children. The commandant’s family always filled his pew, with or without him. But usually without him.

"Hé!" The niggling doubts that always seemed to hover just beyond François’s sight suddenly came into focus. That was why this God had no meaning for him! The religion of the white men was not the white men’s faith. It belonged to the women. The men built this house of communion, but they came only for celebrations. The men cried Mon Dieu with every other breath, but it was their womenfolk who bowed their heads in daily prayer. Their priest was a man, but even he wore long skirts and denied himself his very manhood!

The church bell tolled the end of Mass, but the pride that swelled each time he heard its peal gave way now to an empty truth. He had taken the iron the Reverend Père had ordered up from New Orleans and he had molded it into

music, but the god he honored when he forged that churchyard bell could never be his own.

The infant whimpered softly, and its mother began to croon the song Madame had taught her. Ave María, grátia plena, Dóminus tecum. Unbidden, his loins tightened as he gazed upon his wife and the child she had just borne him. His woman was strong, a statuesque goddess of deepest ebony, with a high, queenly forehead below her close-sheared crown of plush black nap. Her nose flared nobly, and her deep-ruby mouth was full and generous, softly shaped now as she sang her song of mother-love. But François knew the power and heat that burned inside those lips.

Oui, Fanny was strong. Still it was not a physical strength that had brought her from her bed, just hours after childbirth, to see her infant baptized at the holy font. It was faith. Simple, unquestioning faith. Fanny could believe in the god of this new world. She did believe. But he could not.

Time, François, she had promised him. Time will make the difference. I came here as a girl. You came as a man. In a year, two years, you will see the power of this God, and you will believe. But François knew now no time could bridge the chasm. He would never believe because he was a man, because here there was no god in which men believed.

"Bonjour, Fanny. François."

The stridency of the voice startled François from his musing. For a moment he almost lost the composure that long since had won for him the respect of his master and the suspicion of his master’s wife. His eyes hardened, then hooded themselves with caution, as his mistress glided toward them, moving with a grace curious for so plump a form. Emanuela María Stefania Sanchez-Navarro Juchereau de St. Denis was shorter than most women at the post. Yet she managed to look down upon everyone she met, and the inches her stature lacked were well augmented by the raven braids she piled above her higher than the triple-crowned tiaras of the bishops she had known in Mexico.

Père is almost ready for the baptism, Emanuela announced. "Monsieur de la Chaise is coming now from the magazin. Your child has been very honored, you know, by his consent to be her godfather. It is not every slave child who has an important official for its parraine." Emanuela’s fan fluttered in the stale summer air, sweeping away the fly that buzzed in and out of the folds of her mantilla.

"But of course we will still wait for Monsieur. He takes these matters very

seriously, I assure you. The management of this frontier is never so heavy a burden that he would neglect the spiritual needs of the souls we hold in trust for God. As I tell you and our other nègres so often, it is such an honor that God has chosen us to be the instrument of your salvation!"

Emanuela’s chatter rolled on. Three times before, François thought, his Fanny had produced an infant for the greater fortune of M’sieur de St. Denis and the greater glory of Madame’s god. Three times before, he had taken that infant to the Reverend Père for baptism as the law prescribed, and each time Madame had told him how honored she was that God had blessed her and the great M’sieur so generously.

By now, François could recite by heart the story of her childhood, the years she had been taught her catechism in a school she called a convent, and the endless prayers she had raised to heaven that her god would find a way to use her for his glory. And again, as her litany invoked his own searing memories of the Mexican port in which he had been sold, his heart argued that she was using him—for far more than the mere toil a slave was expected to provide.

Ah, my man François!

A booming voice cut into Emanuela’s prattle, and François masked a smile at the sight that greeted him. Sieur Louis Juchereau de St. Denis was as resplendent as usual. Most men at this frontier outpost went about in frayed shirts of coarse linen and breeches of ticking, but M’sieur le Commandant never let himself be seen without his braid-trimmed surtout and India breeches, his silken hose and silver knee buckles. Even on so routine a matter as the baptism of another slave child, the commandant’s only concession to the August heat was the substitution of a pale blue taffeta with silver trim for his preferred surtouts of scarlet damask and golden braid.

What do we have here this time, my man? Another son to whom you can teach your many skills—or a daughter with her mother’s sable beauty?

A girl-child, M’sieur, François replied, with a nod of deference prompted more by a respect for the man than by a fear of the master.

"Hehn? Another daughter! Well, what do we call this one? As I recollect, I named your first one Gertrude after my own saintly babe, God rest her soul, but you insist upon calling your child Dgimby or something of the sort. You know, the Reverend Père is scandalized over that. Every time you bring that girl to church he reminds me that no saint ever lived by such a name and declares

me derelict in my Christian duty because I humor you."

François was not surprised that his master’s tone mocked the reproof his words contained. He well knew by now that M’sieur lost no sleep over chastisement from a priest. A string of clerics had come and gone on this frontier while St. Denis remained entrenched—and it was no coincidence that their departures followed an occasion when their crucible crossed with the commandant’s sword.

Ah, too, St. Denis continued with his small talk while Père Arcange dismissed the last of his lingering flock. It seems to me we named your firstborn François, the same honorable saint’s name I gave you at baptism, but you insist upon calling the boy Choera. Eh?

There’s less confusion that way, M’sieur, François parried with a shrug.

"Oui, oui. You have a point, François. You have a point. So, for the sake of less confusion, what do you plan to call this child?"

"With your leave, M’sieur… Coincoin*. In the tongue of our people, it is the name given to all second-born daughters."

"Then Coincoin it is. Unofficially, of course. She’ll still need a Christian name. I assume Madame has told you that Mademoiselle Marie will be this babe’s godmother? Madame feels it will be good spiritual training for our daughter. His voice lowered discreetly. Of course, just between us, I suspect the child has not the slightest notion of what a baptism is all about."

"Possible, M’sieur. But perhaps both of you are right. When one is eight years old, one sees a baby as a plaything, not a soul. François carefully turned off all expression from his face as he continued. Still, I am sure that Madame will find a way to teach ma’mselle something from this occasion…."

Pax vobis… Peace be with you.

The chatter ceased as Père Arcange intoned the opening words of ceremony from the doorway of the mud and cypress cabin someone had grandly named L’Eglise de St. François. His voice was low and soft, a rhythmic monotone with no trace of monotony, and François’s tension eased in spite of himself. Of all the traits of this religion he had cataloged to date, the hypnotic intonations of a language spoken only by the priest was the only one that stirred his soul.

Quo nómine vocáris?

Marie Thérèse, Your Reverence, the godfather responded as he took the sleeping babe from her mother’s arms and presented her at the doorway, routinely assuming the spiritual role of surrogate father.

If, then, you wish to enter into life, Père Arcange droned over the sleeping infant, keep the commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

Three times the rotund priest blew into the infant’s face. Depart from her, unclean spirit, and give place to the Holy Spirit, the Consoler. Receive the mark of the cross on your forehead and within your heart. So live that you will indeed be a temple of God.

The air hung still and humid as they moved, then, into the sacristy of whitewashed bousillage. Through the unpaned windows, a fierce sun probed all the corners, stretched toward the altar, and then beamed as it saw its own reflection in the golden monstrance and silver chalice that adorned the antipedium of the altar. Inside, François shifted his weight, restlessly, checking the impulse to settle comfortably upon his haunches.

"C’est impropre!" Madame had once admonished him. "You may kneel in church, at the proper moments, but you must not squat."

Accípite sal sapiéntiae: propitiátio sit tibi in vitam aetérnam. Receive salt, which is the symbol of wisdom. May it bring you God’s favor for life everlasting.

The infant stirred as the grain was placed into her mouth. François could almost taste its bitterness. Seven Holy Seasons had come and gone since the Christmas he had been brought into this chapel for his own baptism. A brut nègre they had called him, a black man thrust among whites, bewildered by a world for which nothing in his own had prepared him. That grain of salt had brought him the promised wisdom, but as yet he had seen no sign of favors from this god.

Marie Thérèse, credis in Deum Patrem omnipoténtem, creatórem coeli et terrae? Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?

I do believe, the infant’s godfather answered in her stead, as ritual required.

Marie Thérèse, credis in Jesum Christum, Fílium ejus únicum, Dóminum nostrum, natum, et passum? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born into this world and who suffered?

Again, the ceremonial reply, I do believe.

But what if she doesn’t? François argued mutely. You can answer for her now, M’sieur de la Chaise, just as M’sieur the surgeon answered for me that Christmas when I was as ignorant of your god as my girl-child is today. But

when we meet your god—if we meet your god!—we must answer for ourselves. How will we answer then?

Viz baptizari? Do you wish to be baptized?

I do. Again the godfather intoned the expected answer, as the little godmother twisted her damp locks and looked about her for a place to sit. Madame frowned. Her child stiffened.

Ego te baptízo in nómine Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti. I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The infant cried, lustily, as the stream of water from an upturned urn traced a cross upon her forehead. Fanny’s grip tightened on François’s arm, and he saw a tear wind down her face. He had not seen her cry since the morning they had first stood together in this church, two weeks after his arrival at the post, and exchanged vows with words he could not understand but whose meaning was clear enough. She had cried tears of sorrow then, but this was one of joy. That much he understood, although there was much else about this woman he could not fathom. He had sired four children by her since M’sieur bought her from Sergeant Rachal and gave her to him as his wife. She had moved into his bed upon command—and unexpectedly into his heart—but he still did not understand her any more than he could grasp this god Madame had taught her to love.

Accípite vestem candidam, quam pérferas immaculátam… et irrepresehensibílis custódi baptísmum tuum. Receive this white garment. Never let it become stained… and keep the grace of your baptism throughout a blameless life.

The wee marraine, short and plump in the way of her mother, tugged upon the blanket that wrapped the newborn child. Smiling, De la Chaise lowered the fretting babe for little Marie to see. A tiny black fist flailed and caught a pudgy white one, as the godmother tiptoed to her highest and kissed her godchild’s cheek. The whimpering ceased. The little church grew still. And the child’s father fought back tears of his own.

•

•

*Pronounced KonKwn, the name is from the Glidzi dialect of the Ewe people of Togo.

2

November 1743

François rapped discreetly on the commandant’s office door, lifted the latch, and stepped inside without waiting for his master to bid him enter. Rusting iron

creaked as the slab of splintered cypress closed behind him, and he made a mental note to grease the hinges the first free moment he might have.

It was an endless battle he waged—they all waged—against the elements here at the westernmost outpost of France’s colonial empire. A quarter-century had passed since King Louis’s troops had invaded the lands of the Natchitoches Indians and cleared this stretch of Red River they called the Cane. They had thrown up buildings to punctuate the point that the Natchitoches nation was now off-limits to missionaries from Mexico and that the Red River was a line crusading Spaniards should not cross. But the God of Nature that had ruled Red River for eons longer had proved their greatest foe. Spring floods and summer fevers respected nothing. They permeated every token of civilization the Frenchmen planted in their soil, and were it not for the will of a single man and the respect he earned from those who both feared and followed him, Poste Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches would have long since surrendered to rust and rot.

You sent for me, M’sieur?

"Oui, François." The old commandant turned from the window as he spoke and limped slowly back to his desk.

The arthritis is getting worse, François noted with a twinge of worry…. M’sieur’s troubles weigh more heavily on him every day. But then he snorted to himself at the irony of life. M’sieur may be a nobleman and master of everything in sight, but man is never so exalted that the gods cannot find a way to humble him. This proud peacock the Indians once called belles jambes, beautiful legs, will soon be a helpless cripple.

François, my man. St. Denis barely paused as he heaved his frame into the oversized chair François had carved for him two winters before, then nodded in the general direction of the fireplace. "This gentleman is Señor Delago, senior aide to His Excellency, Justo Boneo y Morales, the new governor of Tejas. Señor Delago and I have an assignment for you tonight—one of considerable importance to us all."

François’s eyebrows almost cocked at the exuberance in his master’s voice, an enthusiasm the old commandant rarely showed these days. "Certainement, M’sieur. François turned as he spoke, dutifully acknowledging the presence of his master’s guest with the bow that had been one of the first refinements St. Denis had insisted upon his learning. Seenyor Deel-agha…?" his tongue tripped hesitantly over the Spaniard’s name, and the visitor’s taut mouth curled

into scorn.

No habla español, esclavon? The sneer in Delago’s clipped Castillian was plain as he raised his eyebrows at his host. This is the Negro who is to handle our transaction tonight, Señor?

I would have no other, Delago. I assure you, François is a trusted servant.

The Spaniard shrugged, while his reed-thin, white-gloved hand plucked lint from the suit of unrelieved black he affected after the manner of continental grandées. It is certainly not my place to tell a man of your reputation how he should conduct his affairs.

Nor would I expect you to, St. Denis retorted, and the Mexican emissary smiled back this time—a flash of perfect teeth that did nothing to soften the sting of his thinly veiled sarcasm. Flinging his cape across girlish shoulders, Delago stepped forward to extend his hand, forcing the old commandant to rise again, and St. Denis clutched his desk for support as he leaned across it to return the visitor’s limp shake.

Con su permisso, Delago continued smoothly. I believe we have concluded our discussion, Señor. Since I have arrangements of my own to make before tonight, I must ask your leave.

Of course, St. Denis replied with strained civility, and François could not help but notice the now-familiar note of weariness creeping back into his master’s voice. Please give your illustrious governor my regards, and those of Madame as well. She still recalls him fondly from her childhood, and it was a happy day for both of us when we learned of his appointment to Los Adaës. Do tell our old friend that we eagerly await his first visit.

"Sí, señor. The frontier is truly a lonely place for men of our rank, no? Delago simpered. The company of rabble and negros—even comely ones—does grow boresome."

On the contrary, Delago. No man is boring, and station and color make no difference.

The thin gash that marked the Spaniard’s mouth twitched at the older man’s terse rebuke. I must say, Señor de San Denis, it has been an interesting morning. It is not often one has the opportunity to meet an adversary whose legend has spread throughout every capital city on the continent.

Adversary, Delago? I thought you came here today in friendship?

"Mas o menos, señor. Shall we say that I have come as the emissary of your friend and my governor? But the crown of Spain and the crown of France know better than to trust each other, even on this frontier."

Polished boot heels squeaked across the rough flooring as the envoy wheeled toward the door. "A díos, señor comandante!"

God be with you, too, St. Denis echoed, but it was a snort he gave to François as Delago closed the door behind himself. High heels, no less! A bantam who has to stand on a perch before he can hold his own with roosters is a man of little self-esteem and much deceit.

I suspect you’re right, M’sieur, François agreed politely.

What’s more, he thinks me a fool as well.

Oh, no, M’sieur…

"Oh, yes, François. But that’s to my advantage, rest assured. Right now that little popinjay is wondering how I’ve managed to rule these borderlands for thirty years. The Indians love me, the Spaniards fear me, and he thinks me a senile old fool who puts his trust in ignorant nègres. The commandant’s weathered face cracked into a grin. But, then, he does not know you yet, does he, my man?"

A sudden draft of chilled November air cut through the open shutters, and François hastily moved to latch them when he saw his master shiver.

Delago tells me that the storehouses at Los Adaës are almost empty, St. Denis went on idly. They didn’t harvest enough corn there this fall to feed the soldiers through the winter, much less the settlers or the mission Indians. In fact, he says there is not enough to last the month, and I don’t doubt it. Every year those damn fool Spaniards try to farm their red clay hills, and the more they plant the less they have. Governor Boneo’s spies have reported the good crop we made here on the river, so he hopes we’ll fill their grain bins for them.

The regulations have been eased, M’sieur? François asked warily.

"Sacrebleu! Those fools in Paris don’t care what happens in the colony, so long as their pockets are lined. Non, François, St. Denis went on wearily, trade between the Spanish post and ours is just as illegal as it ever was. Still, I can’t sit here with a full storehouse while others starve a few leagues away."

No, M’sieur.

"And besides, Delago has offered a generous price. Three pesos per bushel."

François whistled in appreciation, then quickly straightened his face as his master scowled. Beg pardon, M’sieur, he mumbled.

M’sieur did not answer. Instead he rummaged deep in the drawer of his desk, and then his scowl grew darker as he shook the flask he had retrieved and realized it was empty.

"You finished that last week, M’sieur, when the ordinateur from New Orleans was here. Shall I go to the brandy shop for more?"

St. Denis tossed the empty bottle back into the drawer and slammed it shut. "No, never mind. Besides, I did not empty it while that prattling fool was here. I waited politely until he left. If I had gotten drunk before I shoved his pirogue down the river, I would have told him what I think of his damned governor and the council and their accursed refusal to pay me for all the presents I have to give these Indians. It takes more than a handful of trinkets to buy peace out here on King Louis’s frontier."

"Oui, M’sieur," François murmured.

"Merde, François! That’s why I took the Spaniard’s offer for that grain. I’m not greedy, and I don’t condone breaking rules without good reason. Last week I’d have given Boneo what he needs to keep that poor post from starving, but so long as my own governor forces me to buy the loyalty of all the western tribes out of my own pocketbook, then I have to have funds to do it. Last year alone put me twenty thousand livres in debt."

"Oui, M’sieur, François repeated, before proceeding cautiously. About tonight, M’sieur?"

"Mais oui… tonight. The old Frenchman leaned forward thoughtfully, lightly juggling in his big gnarl of a hand the pouch of coins Delago had tossed onto his desk. Oui, François. Tonight we make the first shipment."

The first?

Even my governor has his spies—and even in my district. Prudence calls for several small deliveries. Delago’s men will meet you in the woods behind my barns with three strings of pack mules, an hour past sundown. One hundred and fifty bushels should go overland by them. Get Caesar and a couple of his boys to help you.

Joseph and Noël, M’sieur?

"Oui. They’ll do. On second thought, use Zenon, too. It will take three pirogues to haul the other hundred and fifty bushels I promised Delago for tonight. Let Caesar and his boys man those."

And I, M’sieur?

Coins jingled softly again as St. Denis resumed his absentminded juggling of the pouch. You’ll see that everything goes as planned, François, and collect the other half of my money. Delago paid 450 pesos in advance. He’ll give you the balance after the grain is loaded into the government storehouse at Los Adaës.

"Oui, M’sieur, François hesitated momentarily before venturing to inquire. And you trust him?"

Not at all—under any other circumstance. But we have the upper hand in this matter, François. We have what he needs. Still, the old man’s brows furrowed as he read the uneasiness lurking on his nègre’s face. You’re skeptical?

For a man who needs what you have, M’sieur, François parried, the Spaniard shows a considerable lack of deference.

The commandant cackled. "Ma foi! Strange you should say that! Did I ever tell you that Madame says the same about you? In her opinion, you show too great an inclination to judge your masters."

François stood there, blandly, and St. Denis grinned back, his humor now restored. For two decades he had maneuvered the French and the Spanish and a dozen tribes—all men of the same ilk, priests and politicians and hunters and warriors alike, regardless of the cut of their clothes or the color of their skin—across the untamed borderlands like human pawns on an undrawn chessboard and he had done it with one sole skill: his ability to read in men’s eyes what their mouths did not say. As short as François might be on deference, he was long on loyalty and had damned good instincts of his own. That, alone, was worth more to Louis Juchereau de St. Denis than all the fancy work his Togo slave did with wood and metal.

And so, indulgently, the Frenchman leaned back in his chair and lit one of the long cigarros the Spanish governor had sent as a token of his goodwill.

"Ça va, François, tell me something. You’re a man of some learning and worldly experience—granted, your world was much different from this one—but tell me anyway. How does this Señor Delago strike you?"

François’s face tightened, hinting at a bitter memory. In fact, M’sieur, the señor reminds me very much of my world….

Oh?

"…and the jackal in the markets of Dakar who spit on my wares when I offered them to him at a fair price—then sent his henchmen to steal them from

me that night because he knew mine was the finest metalwork there was."

But in this case, François, the man in the marketplace has offered more than a fair price, and the goods are as much as his. What is there for him to steal?

François shrugged, and his face went expressionless. "I’m only a nègre, M’sieur. Undoubtedly, I am wrong and you are right."

"Zut, François! Don’t play that role with me. We respect each other too much for that. Still, if you’re willing to gamble, you might load on some of that tobacco you grow in your spare time and see what kind of bargain you can strike for yourself."

François could not suppress the grin. "But, M’sieur! A French-speaking nègre in a nest of Spaniards? I am sure to be rooked!"

Mi negro pobre, his master chuckled back. "If Delago has assumed that, he’s in for a surprise, verdad?"

Verdad!

3

At Los Adaës

"Mon Díos, negro! Are you questioning my honor?" Delago spat at François. The hawks that perched inside his eyes were clearly ready to pounce. Even by the candlelight of the adobe warehouse, François could see the man’s taut muscles straining to hold in check his birds of prey.

No, Señor, François replied politely, with no trace of the clumsiness he had used to address the man that morning at Natchitoches. As the Spaniard caught the subtle difference in François’s accent, his brow arched and François smiled. His feigned ignorance of the Spanish tongue had well served its purpose once again. He had ridden mutely in their midst down the whole seven leagues of El Camino Real that linked the French post to the Spanish one, and he had not been surprised by what he overheard. They had cursed their laden asses up every hill and damned the French on the downslopes in between. Assuming he spoke no Spanish, they had used no discretion, and their careless chatter had confirmed his own suspicions. Delago’s concern for the hungry at Los Adaës was far less sincere than St. Denis’s had been.

Four pesos per bushel! Delago had reported to the Spanish governor on

his return from Natchitoches. "Twelve hundred pesos total! That is the price set by that French ladron who holds this frontier under his oppressive thumb. Others there would have sold me the grain we need so badly at three pesos per bushel, but the Great Thief of Natchitoches would skin anyone who encroached upon his monopoly of border trade. As you instructed, Señor, I left the pouch of four hundred and fifty pesos as a pledge, but I was forced to promise delivery of seven hundred and fifty more tonight."

Aha! François had reckoned to himself as he followed their clipped Spanish. Delago collects another seven hundred and fifty pesos from his governor. He gives me the four hundred and fifty for M’sieur, and he pockets the rest. Still, François had not anticipated the full measure of