"It would take more than your wicked tongue to disturb my faith, Papa," Nicole said with a wry smile.
It was amusing to hear Grandpapa and Aunt Nicole bicker about what the whites called "faith." As the carriage rolled along, Auguste recalled the many lectures he had listened to on Jesus and the Trinity at St. George's, which was affiliated with the Episcopal Church. But Auguste had walked with the White Bear and talked with the Turtle. He knew them as he had never known the white people's God, and what went on in their dimly lit, waxy-smelling churches had no attraction for him.
He knew that Christians, for the most part, saw his beliefs about the spirit world as rubbish sprung out of ignorance—or, worse, inspired by the Evil One. Père Isaac's efforts to persuade him to walk in the way of Jesus had prepared him for that. At school he did not speak of things sacred to him, so as not to expose them to white scorn. When teachers and fellow students tried to persuade him to take instruction in Christianity, he was polite and evasive.
And when he felt he was smothering in the noise and crowding and dirt of the huge city of New York, he would borrow a pony from the lady he called Aunt Emilie—his father's cousin, actually—and ride out of New York along a trail that led to the north end of the island of Manhattan. There in a forest cave he had found, he would chew a bit of the sacred mushroom Owl Carver had given him and restore his link with the spirit world by journeying with the White Bear. All through these six years, his faith had remained strong.
Nicole broke in on his thoughts. "You're still studying medicine?"
"Just a beginning: I've read some books, attended some lectures. I assisted a surgeon—Dr. Martin Bernard—at New York Hospital. I bought myself a surgeon's box of instruments—got it in the trunk, there. But if anybody came down with anything worse than an ingrown toenail, I'd be scared to do anything about it."
Elysée said, "You can pull teeth, I hope, like any proper surgeon?"
Auguste shrugged. "I do have a turnkey for that. But I've never actually used it."
"The only person in town who knows anything about treating the sick is Gram Medill, the midwife," Nicole said. "Tom Slattery, the blacksmith, pulls teeth. We need a real doctor."
Auguste felt a fluttering in his stomach as he wondered when he should tell this white family of his that he wanted to leave them. Nicole was thinking, he realized, that he would stay here at Victoire.