Savage Lands by Clare Clark

as though the words amused him.
    She nodded, almost a shrug, and did not look up.
    Gently he placed his fingers beneath her chin and brought her face up to his. To think of it still caused her skin around her jawbone to thrill.
    ‘Elisabeth Savaret,’ he said again, and the smile tugged at his lips. ‘I have a question for you. Will you answer it?’
    ‘Perhaps.’ Her voice was hoarse.
    ‘Perhaps?’
    ‘It depends upon the question.’
    ‘A reasonable condition.’ His face was so close that she could see the flecks of gold in his grey-green eyes. ‘Very well then, this is my question. What in the world is it that vexes you so?’
    The next day, the day that Louise-Françoise Léfevre died, he called for her. Afterwards he said laughingly that it was her ill temper that drew him to her, that alone among the straining, sickly girls for sale, she had flint and fire. He was a Québecois, he said, born to snow and ice. He was powerless to resist fire. She kissed him then and did not tell him that the fire was all his, that, before him, the rage in her was all ash and the thin sour smoke of disenchantment. In the brightness of his own flames he forged her, dissolving her chill metal to a stream of liquid red.
    He had gone on an exploratory voyage, something to do with minerals and mines. It was a hazardous journey, for the mines were situated in the territory of the Nassitoches tribe, requiring him to travel through nations who were enemies to the French, but he assured her that he would be in no danger. He knew the country well. The previous winter, when there had been no ships and barely enough food, and the commandant had feared the men of the garrison would starve, he had billeted them among the natives, who had taken them in and fed them. On board the Pélican La Sueur had cocked an eyebrow as he described these billets and the willingness of the savages to satisfy every one of the Frenchmen’s particular needs.
    ‘Do you see now why the colony needs you so?’ he declared. ‘A man without French wine must slake his thirst with Indian beer.’
    The trader’s chivalry was always blade-bright, calculated to cut cleanly. Aboard ship she had thought her own hide too thick for it. Now, as she huddled beneath the quilt, crushing the skirts of her dress, she was glad that La Sueur had taken ill in Havana and was not yet come.
    She tried to summon the trader’s face, pallid and sweaty with fever, but instead it was the bodies of the savage women that came, their glistening breasts and their supple bellies and the languid roll of their smooth coppery limbs. They gathered in the shade of the canebrake behind the garrison, their deft fingers twisting the dried leaves of the palmetto into baskets. Their bodies were perfectly smooth, like brown fish, for they stripped the hair from their skin with a paste of shell ash and hot water.
    They were not like the slack-mouthed whores of Paris. Their faces proffered no invitation. Their unclothed bodies were a fact, their polished skin declaring their sex with neither pride nor shame, like animals. They knew nothing of modesty or restraint. The thought of him in the embrace of one of those women, his skin against hers, his fingers tangled in her black hair, his lips upon her lips–
    Elisabeth buried her face in the blanket, forcing the image away before it could bring ill luck. As she inhaled, filling herself with the smell of him, the dread gave way to shame. What kind of wife doubted her husband so, when he had given her no cause to doubt him? He had promised himself to her before God, his voice clear and unfaltering, the secret smile pressed into the side of his mouth. He was hers as entirely as she was his, her lawful wedded husband to have and to hold and to hold and to hold, till death do us part.
    Except that she must not think of death, nor of fear, not yet, not while he was gone. Soon he would be home, perhaps even today. Until then, her faith in his safety was all she