Free Savage Lands by Clare Clark Page A

seeking in his man’s face the child that he had once been, and it grieved her, the years that she had lost.
    As the months passed and the other women grew peevish and then fretful, sharing confidences and herbal infusions that might be relied upon to stimulate the womb, she received the first ghostly spasms of her monthlies with a slackening in her belly that she knew for gratitude. To the bewilderment of the other women, she had refused the acquisition of a native slave, declaring it an unnecessary expenditure while there were no children. Now she prayed nightly that she might be spared the trial of conception. For all that they had been married a full year, the prospect of sharing her husband with another remained unendurable.
    She knew better than to speak of this with him. He declared her tough, fearless, stubborn to the point of pigheadedness, and he relished the perversity of her. Her refusal of a slave delighted him as much as he claimed it infuriating, not least because the King had not paid the army in two years. He called her his tigress, his little alligator, and laughed gleefully when she complained of the foolishness of the other men’s wives.
    ‘It’s little wonder they distrust you,’ he crowed, his hands circling her waist. ‘Those doxies cling to one another like drowning rats on a raft. It is a reproach to them all when you manage quite well all by yourself.’
    And so she did, almost. She was thankful to be free of the trifling gossip of the women, their sour faces and constant complaints. They took comfort in each other’s miseries, bemoaning always the dearth of things, their dissatisfaction sucking the vigour from the air around them until Elisabeth could hardly breathe. They traded boils and blisters, raw hands and aching backs, poor slaves and poorer husbands. When occasionally one among them contrived a kind of jest, their laughter was disagreeable, grudging, wrung from them like water from laundry.
    In her own cabin Elisabeth could close her eyes and smile and know herself quite happy. All the same it was lonely turning always from the chickens’ companionship, and it grew lonelier still when in time they ceased to offer it. Jean-Claude was absent from the settlement a great deal. Despite the small gardens that the wives had begun resentfully to cultivate, the settlement continued to produce almost nothing for itself, and it was his job to ensure that there would be sufficient food to see the colonists through the winter months. To this end he travelled not only to the neighbouring tribes but sometimes even to the Spanish fort at Pensacola.
    At first Elisabeth did nothing during his long absences. She walked dreamily around the town, along the river, or she simply lay in bed, her limbs sprawled, luxuriant with recollection. Once she took from her trunk a book of poetry and tried to read it, but her eyes raced ahead of the words, her belly warm with poetry of its own, and she closed the covers and knew that Jean-Claude was right, that books were the solace of those who did not live.
    But the days were long and idleness loosely woven. She grew restless, the longing for him fidgeting in her fingers. One afternoon as she slept, the fear crept upon her and in the helpless space between waking and sleeping she saw him sicken, his pale face glazed with sweat; she saw him set upon by savages, his red blood pooling in the dark shadows of the canebrake, leaking into the thick yellow water of the river.
    She rose then and, though it was the hottest part of the day, she built a fire and lit it and set the iron on it to heat while she gathered all his shirts and his neckcloths that were piled together in a basket. They smelled of air and the leaves of the bush where they had been spread to dry and, very faintly, of him. Quickly she set the pressing board on the table and, wrapping a cloth around it, laid the first shirt out on its surface. Then, seizing the hot iron, she leaned down upon it with all her