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.

The hot food made Auguste thirsty, and he drank more wine. Each time he
held his glass out, Guichard, smiling toothlessly, seemed to be there
with the pitcher.

Still hungry, he grew impatient with knife and fork and began picking
the food up with his hands. He tried to take small pieces with his
fingers and eat quickly so that people would not notice, but then he
caught the two boys and the girl, at the other end of the table,
watching him and giggling and whispering to each other. His face went
hot.

Nicole, sitting on his right, asked him short, simple questions about
how the Sauk and Fox lived, and he answered with the little English he
had. She smiled and nodded at him many times as he told her the Sauk
names for things, and she repeated them after him. She seemed to find
pronouncing them easy.

The other people mostly talked among themselves in their own language.
The pale eyes never stopped talking, it seemed. Would there never be a
moment of thoughtful silence? The voices, all speaking so fast, gabbling
like a flock of turkeys, made him dizzy.

A strange feeling was coming over him. He heard a buzzing in his ears,
like locusts on the prairie. His face felt numb. He reached up and
touched his cheeks with his fingertips, and it was as if he felt his
face through a thin, invisible cloth.

His stomach started to churn. He felt with a sudden panic that he could
not hold all the food he had eaten. The peppers and the wine were
burning together in his stomach. He lurched to his feet, swaying from
side to side. The vast room seemed to be spinning like a canoe in a
whirlpool, and the voices around him faded away.

He felt Nicole qui