“My father had a tiny farm, not too far from here. But he died of a snake’s bite, when I was six or so. My mother could not manage to keep us—she was not strong enough for farming—and so she sold herself, putting the money with a carpenter for my apprenticeship once I should come of age, that I might learn a useful trade.”
He set the ivory box in its slot in the game table, and wiped away a crumb of tea cake that had fallen on the cribbage board.
“But then she died,” he went on matter-of-factly. “And the carpenter, instead of taking me as an apprentice, claimed that as I was the child of a slave, I was by law a slave myself. And so he sold me.”
“But that’s not right!”
He looked at her in patient amusement, but didn’t speak. And what had right ever had to do with it? his dark eyes said.
“I was fortunate,” he said. “I was sold—cheaply, for I was very small and puny—to a schoolmaster, whom several plantation owners on the Cape Fear had hired to teach their children. He would ride from one house to another, staying in each for a week or a month, and I would go with him, perched behind him on the horse’s rump, tending the horse when we stopped, and doing such small services as he required.
“And because the journeys were long and tedious, he would talk to me as we rode. He sang—he loved to sing, that man, and he had a most delightful voice—” To Brianna’s surprise, Ulysses looked faintly nostalgic, but then he shook his head, recalling himself, and took out a cloth from his pocket, with which he wiped the sideboard.
“It was the schoolmaster who gave me the name Ulysses,” he said, back turned to her. “He knew some Greek, and some Latin as well, and for his own amusement, he taught me to read, on the nights when darkness befell us and we were forced to encamp on the road.”
The straight, lean shoulders rose in the faintest of shrugs.
“When the schoolmaster died as well, I was a young man of twenty or so. Hector Cameron bought me, and discovered my talents. Not all masters would value such endowments in a slave, but Mr. Cameron was not a common man.” Ulysses smiled faintly.
“He taught me to play chess, and would wager upon my success, playing against his friends. He had me taught to sing, and to play the harpsichord, that I might provide entertainment for his guests. And when Miss Jocasta began to lose her sight, he gave me to her, to be her eyes.”
“What was your name? Your real name?”
He paused, thinking, then gave her a smile that did not reach his eyes.
“I am not sure that I remember,” he said politely, and went out.
56
CONFESSIONS OF THE FLESH
He woke a little before dawn. It was still black dark, but the air had changed; the embers had burned to staleness and the forest’s breath moved past his face.
Alexandre was gone. He lay alone under the tattered deerskin, very cold.
“Alexandre?” he whispered hoarsely. “Père Ferigault?”
“I am here.” The young priest’s voice was soft, somehow remote, though he sat no more than a yard away.
Roger rose up on one elbow, squinting. Once the sleep had left his eyes, he could see dimly. Alexandre was sitting cross-legged, his back very straight, his face turned up to the square of the smokehole overhead.
“Are you all right?” One side of the priest’s neck was stained dark with blood, though his face—what Roger could see of it—seemed serene.
“They will kill me soon. Perhaps today.”
Roger sat up, clutching the deerskin to his chest. He was already cold; the calm tone of this froze him.
“No,” he said, and had to cough to clear his throat of soot. “No, they won’t.”
Alexandre didn’t bother contradicting him. Didn’t move. He sat naked, oblivious of the cold morning air, looking up. At last he lowered his gaze, and turned his head toward Roger.
“Will you hear my confession?”
“I’m not a priest.” Roger scrambled to his knees and scuffled across the floor, the skin held awkwardly before him. “Here, you’ll freeze. Get under this.”
“It does not matter.”
Roger wasn’t sure whether he meant being cold didn’t matter, or whether Roger’s not being a priest didn’t matter. He laid a hand on Alexandre’s bare shoulder. Whether it mattered or not, the man was cold as ice.
Roger sat down next to Alexandre, as close as could be managed, and spread the skin over them both. Roger could feel his own skin ripple into gooseflesh where the other man’s icy skin touched him, but it didn’t trouble him; he leaned closer, wanting urgently to give Alexandre some of his own warmth.
“Your father,” Alexandre said. He had turned his head; his breath touched Roger’s face, and his eyes were dark holes in his face. “You told me he was a priest.”
“A minister. Yes, but I’m not.”
He sensed, rather than saw, the other’s small gesture of dismissal.
“In time of need, any man may do the office of a priest,” Alexandre said. Cold fingers touched Roger’s thigh, briefly. “Will you hear my confession?”
“If that’s—yes, if you like.” He felt awkward, but it couldn’t hurt, and if it helped the other at all…The hut, and the village outside, were quiet around them. There was no sound but the wind in the pine trees.
He cleared his throat. Did Alexandre mean to begin, or was he to say something first?
As though the sound had been a signal, the Frenchman turned to face him, bowing his head so the soft light smoothed the gold hair of his crown.
“Bless me, brother, for I have sinned,” Alexandre said in a low voice. And with his head bowed, hands folded in his lap, he made confession.
Sent out from Detroit with an escort of Hurons, he had ventured down the river as far as the settlement of Ste. Berthe de Ronvalle, to relieve the elderly priest in charge of the mission, whose health had broken down.
“I was happy there,” Alexandre said, in the half-dreaming voice that men use for events that have taken place decades ago. “It was a wild place, but I was very young, and ardent in my faith. I welcomed hardship.”
Young? The priest couldn’t be much older than himself.
Alexandre shrugged, dismissing the past.
“I spent two years with the Huron, and converted many. Then I went with a group of them to Ft. Stanwix, where there was a great gathering of the tribes of the region. There I met Kennyanisi-t’ago, a war chief of the Mohawk. He heard me preach, and being moved of the Holy Spirit, invited me to return with him to his village.”
The Mohawk were notoriously wary of conversion; it had seemed a heaven-sent chance. So Père Ferigault had traveled down the river by canoe, in company with Kennyanisi-t’ago and his warriors.
“That was my first sin,” he said quietly. “Pride.” He lifted one finger to Roger, as though suggesting that he keep count. “Still, God was with me.” The Mohawk had sided with the English during the recent French and Indian War, and were more than suspicious of the young French priest. He had persevered, learning the Mohawk language, that he might preach to them in their own tongue.
He had succeeded in converting a number of the village, though by no means all. However, among his converts was the war chief, so he was protected from interference. Unfortunately, the sachem of the village opposed his influence, and there was continued uneasiness between Christian and non-Christian in the village.