"Auguste de Marion or White Bear or whatever he chooses to call himself"--Bennett pointed an accusing finger at Auguste--"should be hanged as a traitor and a butcher of his own people."
Auguste heard mutterings of approval from around the courtroom and a loud "d.a.m.ned right!" from Raoul. His feeling that this trial was hopeless grew deeper. Bennett had told the jury what they wanted to hear--the version of the truth that would let them do what they wanted to him.
Ford stood up, wiping his brow. The room was hot for late September. He crossed the front of the courtroom to stand before the two rows of jurymen in their borrowed church pews.
"Gentlemen of the jury, I took up arms against the Sauk and Fox Indians under General Edmund Gaines in 1831. I am not prejudiced in favor of Indians. I only ask that you try to understand _this_ man whose life is in your hands.
"You have to decide two questions: One, by traveling and living with the British Band of the Sauk and Fox from September 1831 to August 1832, did Auguste de Marion commit treason against the United States? Two, is Auguste de Marion guilty of the murder of any citizens of the United States or the state of Illinois?
"Is Auguste a traitor to his country? Well, it seems to me that if anything, Auguste holds dual citizenship in the United States and in the Sauk and Fox nation. And, far from being a traitor to either, he tried to make peace between them. The only thing he ever carried against the United States was a white flag.
"Has Auguste committed murder? All we know for a fact is that no one has seen him raise a violent hand against another human being. Otto Wegner told you how Auguste had a chance to kill him, and instead helped him escape. At great peril to himself.
"You"ve heard Pierre de Marion"s will, which explains why Raoul de Marion, who illegally seized the great house known as Victoire, has been so eager to hound this young man to his death.
"This man has lost everything a man holds dear. His father and mother.
His home here in Victor. His home among the Sauk.
"Almost all of his people, his loved ones and the friends of his youth, have been killed. Everyone who lives in Victor knows to their sorrow what happened to his infant daughter. His wife and son are captives, too, and he cannot be with them or provide for them. Which of you, having had so much taken from him so cruelly, would not go mad with grief?
"He has lost so much. All he has left is his life. Let us not, I beg of you, take that from him as well."
Ford sat down in the midst of a heavy silence. Auguste tried to send his shaman"s sense forward into the future to tell him how the jury would decide, but his spirit met a blank wall.
He glanced out a nearby unshuttered window and saw a blue afternoon sky with a few white clouds. Within the wooden walls of this courtroom, sky and sun, prairie and river, seemed very far away.
Judge Cooper said, "Gentlemen of the jury, we have prepared a room upstairs for you. We"ll send food and drink to you as you require. There are cots in case you can"t make up your minds today."
As he watched the twelve men file up the stairs behind the judge"s table, Auguste could not stop his mind from wandering to the worst. He thought about what it would be like to be hanged, the rough grip of the rope on his neck, the blood bursting in his head, the world going black, his body jerking in hopeless struggle, breath cut off, lungs aching, the final silencing of his heart.
He heard a harsh laugh in the back of the room. He turned and saw Raoul in the midst of a group of men standing near the doorway of the courtroom. Beside Raoul was Armand Perrault. Raoul looked at Auguste and smiled. Auguste knew what that smile meant.
Whatever the jury decided, for him there would be no escape from death.
23
Sharp Knife
Late that afternoon, Lieutenant Davis called Auguste from his cell and took him down to the courtroom.
"Judge said send for you. I think maybe the jury"s reached a verdict."
Entering through the rear door of the courtroom, Auguste met Raoul"s eyes and his longing for vengeance made his blood feel like molten metal in his veins.
The jurymen came in through a side door. Robert McAllister, foreman of the jury, glanced at Auguste, then handed David Cooper a folded piece of paper.
"He looked at you," Ford whispered. "It"s an old tale among lawyers that if members of the jury have found the defendant guilty, they don"t look at him."
Cooper read the note and sighed loudly, as if he found the message burdensome. Then he took goose quill and ink and wrote a note of his own. McAllister watched him write, looking over his shoulder, sighed as heavily as Cooper had, looked at Auguste again. After a moment he nodded and took the judge"s note back upstairs.
"Well," said Judge Cooper to the courtroom at large, "it seems the jury"s a pretty fair distance from a verdict. They can"t agree on a lot of things. So, I"ve given orders that they stay upstairs and keep at it.
It looks like we won"t have a guilty or not guilty until tomorrow. The prisoner will go back upstairs to his cell. Court will open at nine o"clock in the morning."
Auguste heard the rear door of the courtroom slam and knew without looking around that Raoul had left.
That night Auguste lay on his corn-husk mattress wondering whether he should try to run away when they took him out. To be shot while trying to escape might be more honorable than hanging. He wished he could see Redbird and Eagle Feather one last time. He wished Nancy would come to visit him. Or at least Nicole, Grandpapa or Frank. But Lieutenant Davis said that for the prisoner"s safety no one would be allowed into the village hall tonight.
He heard a key turning in his door lock. He climbed to his feet.
"Come on," said Davis quickly. "We"re taking you out of here."
_They"ve come to kill me_, Auguste thought. It would not be the first time an inconvenient Indian was "shot while trying to escape." But his shaman"s insight told him Davis was as trustworthy as any Sauk.
"Why? Before the verdict?"
"They did reach a verdict today. You are found not guilty."
Not guilty! Joy flooded through him as he stood, so amazed that he could not move, staring at the open cell door.
When he had recovered enough to move, Auguste followed Davis out of the village hall, to where the two corporals waited with horses in the silent street. The river rippled black and silver in the light of a three-quarter moon. The Ioway bluffs opposite were black bison shapes under a sky spangled with stars.
The moonlight helped Auguste guide his horse up the steep road out of the village. Davis led, followed by Auguste, the two corporals bringing up the rear. After weeks of imprisonment, Auguste reveled in the cool night air blowing in his face.
They pa.s.sed the trading post. The road was wider here, and the three soldiers bunched around him. Raoul was surely in there getting drunk, laughing as he looked forward to seeing Auguste swinging at a rope"s end.
They trotted along the ridge leading to Victoire. Auguste"s heart started to beat harder as he approached the place that had been his home.
The remains of the mansion sprawled on its hilltop like the skeleton of some huge animal, blackened timbers rearing up in the moonlight. People had died b.l.o.o.d.y, horrible deaths there. Was the place haunted now?
Accursed?
A longing came over him to climb that hill again, to sweep away that ruin and rebuild. Put up a fine new house like the ones he"d seen in the East.
_I could do so much with this land, but I"m running away from it again.
Leaving it to Raoul again._
Then they were past Victoire, but the yearning for it clung to him like a lover"s scent.
"By morning you"ll be far out of your uncle"s reach," said Davis, riding beside him.
Auguste"s heart swelled in his chest with the thought that he was more nearly a free man than he had been in weeks.
"If I"m not guilty, why must I run away?"
"Surely you realize that your uncle and his cronies were planning to take you straight from the courtroom to the nearest tall tree if the court didn"t sentence you to death. The foreman brought Judge Cooper a note stating their verdict. The judge wrote back, telling them he would say they hadn"t reached a verdict, and he wanted them to remain in seclusion overnight while we spirited you out of town. They were willing to put up with the inconvenience. After all, who"d want to find a man not guilty and then see him taken out and hanged?"