Savage Lands by Clare Clark Page A

women here,’ he said finally.
    ‘They do not like me.’ She swallowed. ‘I cannot blame them.’
    The Jesuit shrugged cheerfully.
    ‘The soldiers at the garrison dislike me also. Perhaps they shall come around to us in time.’ He smiled, looking around him at the cabin. ‘No books?’
    Elisabeth hesitated, then shook her head.
    ‘One day, I suppose, we may see books at Mobile. A hospital. A church. A decent pâtisserie, God help us. It is not easy to imagine.’
    His kindness was unbearable. She stared up at the palmetto roof as the Jesuit studied her, his stubby fingers steepled against his lips.
    ‘It would make no difference, you know,’ he said gently. ‘Well, a pâtisserie perhaps. But not a church. The mysteries of God’s purpose on earth are no plainer in carved pews. As for books, even the scholars among us see only darkly. Churches and books cannot substitute for faith. We must accept His will.’
    ‘And if we cannot?’
    ‘Then there is nothing for it but a glass of good wine.’
    Then it was June. Elisabeth grew stronger. As the flood waters receded so too did the blackness in her. There was food in the settlement again. No one wanted to remember winter. She scrubbed the cabin clean, replacing the planks that had rotted in the floods. From a trader in the settlement, she acquired a rough lime ground from seashells to whitewash the walls and fresh nettle-bark linen for the windows. She washed the dried slime from the inside of the jar covered with whorls and filled it with flowering grasses. In the garden she knelt in the drying mud, clearing the choke from the roots of the vegetables. When the first peas came she bottled them. Their grassy scent was very sweet.
    Rochon visited often and she was glad to see him. In the hot blue days of summer, loosed from the tyranny of fever, she slept easily once more. Many women in Louisiana lost children. The midwife had told her it was the unhealthy air that did it, the stench of the corrupted swamp, and Elisabeth knew it to be true. Only a savage god would kill a child for punishment.
    She worked hard in the garden. When she parted the leaves of the Apalachean bean plant and saw the ripening beans hanging in shadowed clusters, or bent down to inspect the spreading stalk of the melon, the leaves as broad as her hand and, among them, the tight pale green fruits, something quickened within her, and she longed for Jean-Claude to come home so that she could show him what she had done. She did not show the Jesuit. But when he came she rose from her knees, wiping her hands on her apron, and sat with him as he ate the food she brought him. There was no one else in Mobile she did that for.
    Rochon was unlike any priest she had ever known. He did not speak in sermons. When seeking to propound the wisdom of others, he was more likely to quote the words of poets than the letters of St Paul. His religion was generous, forbearing towards the faults of others, while scrupulously confessing of its own, and his laughter, which began as a rumble within the barrel of his belly and foamed upward to spill from his mouth, was infectious.
    Mobile oppressed him. He pushed to be granted a mission among the savages, but so far Bienville had refused him, insisting that he could not be spared. Confined to the settlement, he chafed in his traces, restrained on one side by the petty impieties of the town’s inhabitants, on the other by the thunderous religiosity of his superior. His only satisfaction was a small school for the children of savage slaves, where for one hour a day when their duties were complete, he taught the children to speak French, which he had convinced the commandant would increase their utility and enhance their value.
    ‘At least you are safe here,’ Elisabeth said.
    ‘A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are for.’
    ‘You are fortunate. To know your purpose.’
    ‘I only know that I must leave Mobile if I am not to rot from the bottom