EPISODE NINETEEN - BEAR ALONE IN PARIS
No one was talking about what happened at the shoot out still. In fact, no one could even bring them selves to look at Bear, mostly out of fear. Bill knew that one day, Bear’s ways would cause a problem socially and even legally. Now the day had come socially, at least. Bill pulled Bear aside and said maybe he should go into Paris for awhile and let the scalping episode age somewhat. If he didn’t come back in a week or two Bill would come and get him. Bear couldn’t believe it, he was on his own for the first time since leaving the clan over a year earlier. Bear had expected to watch Bill’s back as part of the deal for the Burers to support his Bear clan in his absence. But now for the first time Bill was releasing him to be on his own for a period long enough to get into trouble, but not long enough to feel free. Two years to go on the agreement which seemed at this point an eternity. Bear liked and respected Bill well enough but he missed his village and wondered what was happening with his son having the responsibility he once had. Little Bear was a big man, but those kinds of duties can weigh heavily on a young man.
Bear first thought of bringing Klondike with him but he had just got back from a harrowing experience with Jaque the night before and Bear didn’t want to expose him to any kind of reprisal that may come out of the fire at Jean’s house. Bill would be safe and Seafoam as well in the compound of the Jesuits at Versailles. Bear decided to leave the suit of armor and the cannon with Bill. He thought it looked like he was at war and he didn’t want armies to decide to have a quick victory at his expense. Bill saw him off that chilly morning. Bill watched the giant Mohawk disappear down the road. At one point with no reference next to him, Bear looked like any other man from a distance, a great distance.
Half way to Paris, there were buildings and farms along the way for Bear to look at as he walked. Farmers would stop to watch him go by if they saw him. Young boys would run along behind at a respectful distance for a half a mile or so and then fall to the side of the road since Bear had a five foot stride and made following difficult unless someone was willing to trot or run to keep up. It was mid-morning when Bear entered the city proper and made his way to the center of the city.
He thought about going to the Jesuit compound, but figured that the word about the shoot out would have gotten there ahead of time. Instead, he chose to go to the dock area and find a room in one of the run down hotels. He could have afforded any hotel he wanted, but the old ones were less likely to pretend they had no room available. The gentile set was not about to put up with him standing in line at a restaurant or play next to them. Actually, he didn’t have that much interest in the theatre, eating fancy foods, or for that matter being seen at the right places that consumed the wealthy of Paris. Before he checked in at any hotel he first went to the Banke of Paris and withdrew some of the thousands that he had deposited before going to London. The manager was quite courteous, since thousands of ducats were involved and Bear signed authorization for several thousand more to be transferred from the London branch that he had won the arm wrestling contest. Bear easily had enough money to rent a villa and have servants see to his every need, but he was unaccustomed to such life styles and preferred his tavern life to the aimless squandering of life of the idle rich.
The hotel was right on the pier, and the clerk nervously did the paperwork necessary to check him in. He paid for a month and went up to his room to check the bed for bugs and filth. The room was clean and the bedding fairly unstained so he decided to stay the whole month. Bill said he would come looking for him if he wasn’t back in a couple of weeks, but Bear was sure a month would be more like it. It was noon when he came down and asked where a man could get his meat on the rare side. Soon, he was sitting at a small café looking out the dingy window at the men walking by wondering what it was he would be doing for a whole month. The plate was huge and the double serving of beef had been as he ordered – uncooked. The owner himself brought it out to the table, no doubt curious as to what kind of man didn’t even want it seared first. The chair on the other side of the small table had been removed to accommodate Bear’s legs and waist. The owner’s eyes went wide as the full size of Bear came into view. As he placed the pile of meat in front of Bear, he bent over and whispered that he was in a position to help with women or adventure. Bear looked him in the eye and asked what kind of adventure. The owner said there were fights on dock number seven on the weekends where a man could get rich fighting with weapons of his choice, anything but guns. Bear asked who held the bets and had there been any cheating in the past. The owner said every bet had been paid for years and there were even escorts to see the winners to their homes or rooms that were paid out of the placement of the bets - 2% in advance for the escorts and the tallying. Bear smiled at the man and handed him ten times the price of the meal, which was quickly pocketed and no further mention made of either subject by the owner the entire time of Bear’s visit to Paris. Bear ate at the small café several times during the next four weeks, but never said anything to the owner or the owner to him.
It was Monday afternoon, and there was nothing to do until Friday night on pier seven to look forward to. He decided to go down to pier seven and take a look to see if anything was going on during the week. The hotel and café were off pier 27 so he had quite a walk to get to seven. Most piers had buildings that were right on the sidewalk and were closed to the public with all kinds of signs saying no trespassing. Men were looking at the huge Mohawk as he walked by, even though they had sailed the seven seas and most everything there was to see. A man called out Injun but when Bear turned to see who yelled it out no one was looking up and he went on his way.
Finally, he came upon pier 8 and could see there were three piers without buildings in a row then the buildings started up again on pier 5 and onward to what had to be pier 1 with nothing whatsoever showing beyond that. A few men were on pier 8 loading up a small fishing boat. He looked over to number seven but not a soul was on the decking. No one was on 6 either. But there was a cage of sorts on pier 7 that rose above the decking at least 20’ into the sky. On the outside of the cage, were poles over 12” thick and supported cargo netting that comprised the walls and roof. The netting was pulled taunt and nails driven into the poles. There was a single framed doorway facing the sidewalk side that had what appeared to be wire strung on a metal door. Unlit torches ringed the cage completely and there were various tables and chairs facing the cage from three sides. The backside seemed to be on the edge of the pier. Broken glass, broken swords and empty containers of beer from the smell of the place were strewn all along the dock. Earlier Bear had seen several of the King’s Guard in full uniform around the pier he was staying at but he hadn’t seen any from pier 20 on. By the look of pier 7 there didn’t seem to be any enforcement of law at all this far down the waterfront. This would explain the need for escorts for the winners to get their winnings back to a place it was safer to walk. Bear stayed awhile on one of the benches near the sidewalk inspecting the cage. Once inside there was no hole in the netting large enough to escape and the door looked impossible to knock down. The café owner hadn’t mentioned if the fights were to the death but the cage would make it possible to have that as a condition of the fight.
On his way back, he noticed across from pier 23 a loud, active doorway with all kinds of men and women coming out that were obviously drunk. He stopped looking across and, after awhile, he decided to go in. Once inside the double doors, a huge ballroom opened up in front of him with a bar running the full length of the room on the far side and tables packed together on the outside with a dancing area in the middle. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon yet the place was full of laughing, loud boasting, and cloud of cigar and pipe smoke that went down to the floor. Bear’s eyes burned as he made his way across the floor to the bar. He ordered a pitcher of beer and headed to a corner table that was empty and way out of the way where no one was sitting.
Bear sat there watching people and quietly consuming the beer. Men were going to the back rooms with young girls but returning alone from behind the curtains. Later there was some pushing at the bar but a bouncer came up and escorted both men out of the Pleasure Palace. Three times a girl came up and asked if Bear wanted to buy them a drink or have a party in the back, but he told each of them to go away. By the fourth pitcher he was starting to feel the beer and sat back and relaxed for the first time in a long time. As he leaned back against the wall a favorite position of his that he tried to do whenever he was in a new place, he noticed a beautiful young woman across the room that looked as if she might be from the Americas. She was dark with fine features and her profile seemed to be one of the northern tribes of New England as opposed to the southern tribes where the faces were broader and the profiles flatter. Still he did not approach her and she apparently didn’t have any interest in him, at least she didn’t look his way even once the whole time he was watching her. He didn’t have much interest in women as such since he spent most of his time with men in battle or on the road to battle. There were the two girls when he was young and later, his wife who died of the fever years ago after bearing his only child Little Bear, now the head of the Bear Clan back home. After her death he was so unhappy that even when others tried to tell him of the interest of various women in the tribes he would grunt and dismiss the talk offhand. But somehow this girl on the other side of the world was all he could think of for now.
All evening, he watched as she would go behind the curtains with men and come out later to return to the bar. Her trade was obvious, yet his interest in her was not diminished by what she did. Normally, if he saw a woman and she was of that trade he would turn away without a second’s thought, but somehow this one was different. Maybe, it was her profile that reminded him of home or the way she held her head up proudly, even when she came out from behind the curtains, whatever it was he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Finally, he saw her go behind the bar get a bag she had stashed there and go to the back of the building, not the curtained area. He figured she was leaving and lost interest in staying if she wasn’t going to be there. He still wasn’t about to approach her since rejection would be totally unacceptable to a war chief of the Mohawk Nation. He gathered up his coin purse and grabbed his hatchet and headed out the door. He could feel men watching him as he crossed the room, but that feeling was hardly unusual given his mass and bearing. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, the fresh air and darkness helped relieve his blood shot and smoke filled eyes. He turned to the right, his hotel a mere four blocks away. The sounds of women laughing and men shouting were still ringing in his ear, as he headed north along the front of the building marked Pleasure Palace.
As he stepped off the sidewalk to cross the alleyway entrance between the Palace and the next building, he heard a woman cry out in pain. He quickly glanced to his right and there in the darkness was that Indian girl with two men in the alley. One was behind her holding her arms behind her back to the point of her hands showing above her head in what had to be painful since they were behind her back. The cries of pain were from her arms at such angles. The other man was in front with something on his mind that was hard to mistake for anything else. When Bear stopped, they both yelled at him to stay out of this if he wanted to live to tell about it. Bear was not the sort of man that ran along when told to do so. He yelled back to let her go if they wanted to live to tell about running into Big Bear, War chief to the Mohawk Nation and leader of the Bear Clan.
The man in front suddenly hit the girl with his fist sending her to the street where she lay in a heap perfectly still. Then, turning, he pulled out a pistol and aimed it at Bear’s chest. The second man drew a sword and stepped to the side of the first waiting for the first man to fire. Bear was already in motion when the shot was fired. The ball thumped into Bear’s chest just before he went into the air. A second pistol appeared in the man’s hand, then the entire arm with the pistol slid to the street quietly and lay beside the unconscious girl while draining blood onto the cobble stones. The man stared at where his arm just a moment before had been, when the hatchet came through on its second pass and left a half inch path between his head and his shoulders. Soon the head lay along side of the arm, followed immediately by the rest of his body. The second man assumed the stance of on guard, only to look down at his chest and see a handle sticking straight out from the rib cage and a sudden difficulty in breathing. The last thing the second man saw was the evil smile of a Mohawk warrior as he passed out. Bear bent down on one knee and gently turned the face to him so the street lamp on the sidewalk lit up her face. It was swollen to the size of a man’s doubled up fist on the left and her eye was just a slit in a rounded stretched mound of skin that connected her forehead to her neck. He shook her shoulder hard enough to wake most anyone to consciousness, but when there was no response, he leaned over gently lifted her off the ground and in one effortless motion slung her over his shoulder and stood up. Holding her in place with his left hand, he slipped the hatchet into his belt. Then, before leaving pulled the knife out of the second man’s chest and using his foot to hold each head in place, he proceeded to scalp both men with the knife one handed, while holding the unconscious girl with the other. Then, he wiped the blade on their clothes, returned it to its sheath, and attached both scalps to his belt. Before leaving the alley, he bent over and snatched up the severed arm, which he laid along side the girl on his left shoulder.
It was late, but not so late that there weren’t any people on the street. There were looks from all of them as a huge Indian walked by with some girl with a puffy face on his shoulder. Two guardsmen stopped him briefly to make sure she wasn’t dead. While questioning Bear, one noticed the severed arm, but decided he wasn’t curious enough to pursue the matter with a man that seemed over a story tall. After all maybe it was her arm, but he knew better. He didn’t say anything to his partner who was a stickler for details. Somehow he was sure they wouldn’t be able to arrest the Indian with the hole in his chest that was oozing blood slowly and they would end up like the fellow that once owned that arm. No one else said a word to Bear the rest of the way to the hotel.
Bear walked through the lobby and up the stairs without so much as a glance to the front desk, where the clerk averted his eyes so he could deny having seen anything unusual if asked at some future time. He was used to looking the other way, but tonight it seemed almost essential that he stay out of the business of the huge Indian. Drops of blood marked the way all the way up to his door. He unlocked the door and walked in, carried her over to the bed and gently lay her down with the right side on the pillow. The arm he put in the corner on some skins he carried for ground cover. Returning to the girl he wet a towel on the dresser with the water pitcher and bowl on it and gently laid it on her swollen face. Then he cleaned up with another towel and returned to the arm. It was well past midnight by the time Bear got down to the task of devouring the arm, all the fighting and carrying had made him hungry and there were no eating establishments open at this time of night. The girl came to, just as he was shoving the last of the bones into the wall through a loose board he found by testing each board, a trick he had learned at sea to hide the evidence that got men so upset when they found it. He quickly pushed the board back in place and turned to the girl.
She asked where she was, and he told her. Then, she asked why he had brought her to his room while she was unconscious. Bear said that he didn’t want her to be victimized by a second group after the first had finished with her. She looked in his eyes for a long time, having spent much of her life having to figure out of a man was lying. Although the giant Indian was as scary as any man she had ever met, there was a steady, straight-forward gaze that looked true. She then felt her face and cursed under her breath when she realized the extent of the damage done to her face. She, then, thanked Bear for saving her from the two men in the alley. He grunted his acceptance of her appreciation and went back to cleaning his hatchet and knives. She, then, told him those two men had many friends in this part of Paris and she was afraid for her life when those men told others of his rescue. Bear said that they wouldn’t be telling anybody anything about last night. She understood what that meant and got quiet. Those men were very dangerous and had killed many a man for what they had on their person in that very alley. She looked at Bear closely for the first time and realized he had been shot with blood still oozing out the wound. She offered to dress the wound but he told her it would stop bleeding by morning and that it was not necessary to tend the wound at all. Then she saw the filed off shafts in his chest and numerous scars from punctures and cuts and gashes all over his chest and legs. She never seen a man with so many signs of battle on his body and became quiet as she thought about what kind of man is this. Then, she said that her name was Manniakuni, “one that speaks with two voices” and that she was of a Lenni Lenape tribe now called the Delaware. She had been kidnapped by the Dutch and taken back to Amsterdam to work for a rich merchant family. Months later she escaped and came to France where she hoped to earn passage back to Philadelphia in the Pennsylvanian colony. Bear couldn’t believe it, a member of the “grandfathers” that crossed the ice bridge into the Americas was here in an old run down hotel in Paris. He had been in many battles against the Delaware and respected their fighting ability, certainly the Monseys in the mountains. To have one of their women in his control seemed like a victory indeed after the defeat of the 6000 in 1716. He had no intention of holding her hostage but didn’t want her to go either. He hadn’t even seen an Indian women in a year and a half. Bear said she could stay with him until she thought it was safe to return to her life at the Pleasure Palace. She cringed when he said Pleasure Palace because she knew he had seen her there and knew what she did for a living. He asked what they call her and she said Manny, then he said they call me Bear. She lowered herself back down on the bed, when the throbbing began to interfere with their conversation and closed her eyes. Soon she fell asleep. Bear watched her sleep for the rest of the night, checking every hour or so to make sure her breathing was normal and changing wet towels when the previous ones got too dry. Even with her face swollen beyond recognition she was beautiful to him and he decided that night he wanted her by his side until his deathbed. He hadn’t thought much about being lonely for years but now it seemed that he was alone in the world and Manniakuni was the answer to being alone.
TO BE CONTINUED