Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 by Jennifer Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

come to stand before the director’s house, craning to get a look at them or to approach it with some trumped-up errand. At the end of a week, the women had been put on view at a reception.
    The women had been told that they would be able to choose their own life partners from the assembled men without coercion. It had not been that way for Elise. Vincent Laffont had swaggered into the room where the women were standing, looked them over like slaves at a market, and advanced at once upon Elise. He had given her no chance to refuse him, had not bothered to make a formal request for her hand, but had taken her at once to the director where he had made his choice known. Due to the unusual circumstances, the banns had been waived and the ceremony performed within the hour.
    Her husband, she had discovered, was a scoundrel. A man twenty years her senior, he was a merchant of sorts, though a more accurate title might well have been smuggler. His authority came directly from the offices of the Company of the Indies in France, as did his backing, so that he was able to circumvent the regulations — the regulations dig forbade trade with any except French vessels from French ports — of Governor Etienne de Perier and the Superior Council, and even of the company itself. It was this authority that had also permitted him to take piece-dence over the other men in his choice of bride. A swaggering man much given to food, drink, and the company of traders who shared his own lack of scruples, Vincent had made a fortune for the company trading with the Spanish and had also gained one for himself.
    He had given his bride no time at all to adjust to her new state. He had bedded her within minutes after the toasts to their healths had been drunk. It had been a painful and degrading experience. Vincent had not expected a virgin and so had used her like a common woman of the streets, without preparation or consideration. As she came to know him, Elise was not certain that it would have made any difference had he known it. He had enjoyed her shrinking and cries of anguish, had taken pleasure in forcing himself upon her. The act of sexual coupling had become a thing of horror for her. Long after it had ceased to be actively painful, it had been an invasion of her innermost being that left her sickened, something to be avoided at all costs. The coldness that she had adopted as a defense had only excited him, however. He had cared not at all for her passions, but had delighted in arousing her to anger and defiance just for the amusement of beating her into submission.
    He had overreached himself with the company, however, shortly after their marriage. Following an investigation into his affairs, instigated by the director, de la Chaise, his authority to trade was revoked by order from France. His ship and the goods that were on it at the time were impounded and sold, and he narrowly escaped charges of smuggling. He had been allowed to purchase land in the Natchez country near Fort Rosalie, the stockade and settlement named for the wife of the minister of state under Louis XIV, the Comte de Pontchartrain, and had retreated there to nurse his wounds and to plot ways of regaining his lost position.
    It was at this time that Elise had begun slowly to lose her fear of the man she had married. She had discovered that, in common with most bullies, he was a coward. So great was the rage that he had inspired with his spiteful comments and careless blows that she had ceased to care what damage he might do to her. She had refused to sleep in the same bed with him, and when he had tried to compel her, she had fought back, kicking, clawing, using whatever weapon came to hand. Once she had poured a pot of boiling sagamite, containing cornmeal, pork fat, ham, and beans, over his head. Another time she had chased him out of the house with an axe. It was after she had crushed three of his fingers with the heavy pestle she used in the pounding trough for turning