"Spectacles. I have trouble seeing things that are near to me, and these help. I like to see what I'm eating."
Last night, as Auguste lay beside the sleeping Star Arrow in the tall prairie grass, he had thought of quietly climbing on his pony and fleeing back to Saukenuk, in spite of the tobacco-sealed promise. Now he was glad he had not run away. The people all looked kindly at him, except for that man Armand, and there were so many wonders to see. He could feel his heart beating hard and his hands trembling with excitement.
When Guichard filled his glass with the red liquid, Auguste drank from it. The liquid was cool and burned at the same time. It was bitter and puckered his lips, but was sweet in his throat. He was thirsty, so he drank more of it.
"Wine," said Pierre. "You've had it before?"
This must be like that burning water the pale eyes call whiskey that I tasted at the council last Moon of Falling Leaves on the other side of the Great River. The chiefs and braves and warriors had drunk much of the burning water from a barrel, he remembered, and they had grown merrier and merrier. The women and boys were each allowed one small sip and the young girls none at all.
"I have tasted it," he said. Pierre frowned and seemed about to speak, but he said nothing when Auguste held his empty glass out for more wine to Guichard, who was going around again with the pitcher.
Men and women brought food to the table on big plates and in bowls. There was turkey, duck, fresh venison, flat bread and round bread, dark bread, white bread and yellow corn bread, cooked fruit and raw fruit, loaves of maple sugar, fruit baked inside crusts, heaps of mashed-up vegetables. There were slices of fish burned almost black and piles of boiled crawfish. The food, Auguste saw, was coming from the connected lodge Marchette had gone into, where the big pot was with all the smoke and steam.
Auguste watched the way the people at the table with him were eating. He tried to use his knife and fork as they did and saw Pierre smile approvingly. The sight and smell of the food made water fill his mouth and his stomach growl. But when he put a slice of meat in his mouth it was unexpectedly very hot to the taste. Not just hot from being cooked, but hot because of something cooked into it.
Peppers, he thought. His mother kept some, traded up from the south, in her collection of medicine plants, and he had tasted their fire.
Pierre himself, Auguste noticed, put very small portions of food on his plate and ate little of what was there. Auguste was saddened. If only there was something he could do for his father. He had consulted Owl Carver before leaving Saukenuk, but the old shaman had only said gloomily that in his experience such an evil spirit in the belly was usually fatal.