Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

as Married as two people can be in the absence of proper Clergy—demonstrated true courage today, whilst I cower’d in the meadow alone, except for my pipe & my tobacco. After the hard labour of the day had been done by others, I stood—hat in hand—outside my own home and humbly begged permission to enter in. The Creek midwife acknowledged my presence with a bare nod, as is her way, and I stumbled into a house of miracles. As I thanked the Almighty for this hale and healthy Child, that most precious of gifts, the Sun lay lightly on my Susan’s flush’d cheeks, and she lifted the Infant toward me so gently, so slightly, that the motion was hardly visible. I seized the invitation & I seized the child. “A girl,” my Susan murmur’d. I would have known the Baby was female merely by the shape of her dainty face.
    I search’d that face, endeavouring to assess the shape of the eyes, the colour of the skin, tho’ unaware that I did it. Then Susan, who has attended the births of Creeks and of Whites and of Half-breeds like herself, said, “All Babies look the same, puffy and red. After a time, you will see whether she looks like you or like me, but you will have to wait.” She looked strait in my eyes & I was shamed.

Chapter 2
    The original roof on the big house at Joyeuse was made of slate, but it had been replaced with tin when Faye’s grandmother was a girl. The patter of raindrops on tin was loud enough to disrupt conversation, but Faye lived alone, in silence. She found the chattering noise companionable, especially on nights like this when she couldn’t sleep. It drowned the voice of the dead woman whose earring rested on a rafter in the cupola, high above her. It overpowered the melancholy voice of William Whitehall. And, if she put some effort into it, she could let the calming raindrops cover the voice of her conscience, which was aghast at the ethical boundaries she had violated.
    The sound of the rain lulled her asleep so slowly that when she awoke to a cloudless morning, she was shocked to find that she had slept at all.

    “I guess we were more tired than we thought last night, Sam,” said the red-haired girl. “We’d better pull this last row of flags up and start over. Everything needs to be right when Dr. Stockard and the rest of the crew get here.”
    The boy regarded the long row. “Damn, Krista. Before breakfast?”
    She grunted and he set to work.
    Slack, lazy workers wouldn’t have gotten up at dawn and they wouldn’t have noticed that the surveying flags weren’t quite where they were supposed to be. Suspicious people, on the other hand, might have wondered how the flags could now be misplaced when they had been so certain of their measurements the night before.
    Their diligence and their accuracy and their naiveté were their undoing. The young woman slid the last flag into the exact place it had stood the day before under the ancient oak.
    The young man approached with a shovel. “Let’s get started now, while it’s still cool.”
    His shovel hovered over the sandy soil, preparing to uproot something better left undisturbed. The vulgar noise of gunfire shocked the silent island and both budding archaeologists dropped to the dirt.

    Faye was eating her usual Wednesday morning breakfast, a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Life at Joyeuse was a lot like camping. Refrigeration was a continual problem, so cereal and milk were out. Also, bacon and eggs.
    Joe cooked supper every night, and he’d been known to flip a Saturday morning pancake, but the rest of her meals were peanut-based. Fortunately, Faye rather liked peanut butter. She’d been awake since sunup, but since it came early in August, she could linger over breakfast and still be at work by eight. Joe occasionally lingered with her, but early morning was prime fishing time. Usually she breakfasted alone and she didn’t mind. Fried fish for supper was worth it.
    On her way to the inlet that sheltered their boats, she met Joe, who proudly brandished a full stringer of fish. “I’ll have these cleaned and in the ice chest, waiting for you until you get back.”
    Faye cranked the motor on her mullet skiff, opened the throttle, and pointed the craft toward Seagreen Island. The island, usually occupied only by Magda’s archaeology crew, was a three-ring circus when she arrived. Some of the excess people were obviously reporters with their camera crews. Faye guessed that the others were campaign personnel and political