Black robe, p.3
Black Robe, page 3
‘Tell me, Daniel, why do you want to make this journey?’
The question hung in the air. Daniel forced himself to look at the Superior. Someone has told him. He must know. ‘Why do you ask, Father?’ He heard his voice waver as he spoke.
‘Because I must decide. When I spoke today with the Sieur de Champlain, he warned me of the great dangers and mentioned your youth. It is true that you are very young.’
‘I do not feel young,’ Daniel said. Relief made him want to burst out laughing. He knows nothing. He knows nothing, after all!
But it was Father Bourque who laughed, throwing back his head and showing carious teeth. ‘That proves you are still a boy. But you haven’t answered my question. Why do you want to make this journey?’
Daniel hesitated, then said, as a child says its catechism. ‘For the greater glory of God.’
I spit on Jesus’ face as I tell that lie.
‘But you are not a Jesuit.’
‘I wish to serve God. That is why I asked to be sent to New France.’
‘Yes. Of course. Of course.’ The Superior bent down and scratched his bitten ankles. ‘Well then, I will make you a promise. If, at the end of a year, you still have this wish, we will do what we can to help you. We will bring you back from Ihonatiria and send you to France to study for the priesthood. Would that please you, Daniel?’
‘Yes, Father.’ He knows nothing. He sees me black-robed, devout, his younger self, prostrate before the altar as I take my priestly vows. As last year I saw myself, when I knelt in the Church of the Blessed Virgin in Honfleur, my arms outstretched in adoration of my Saviour, making my vow to spend two years serving God in a distant land.
‘Are your parents alive?’ Father Bourque asked.
‘No, Father. My nearest relative is my uncle, the priest I told you about.’
‘The one who taught you Latin. So if anything happens to you, which God forbid, he is the one I must write to?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘God bless you, then,’ the Superior said. ‘Oh, and Daniel? Send Father Laforgue to me. I will wait for him here.’
*
Savage drumbeats punctuated drunken Breton songs. Mosquitoes and tiny midges moved in separate clouds as they sought out blood. The day had been warm but an evening coolness came in from the river, bringing relief to the Commandant and the Savage leaders, who sat in a circle on the riverbank; Champlain upright in an armchair, wearing a cloak made of beaver skins. Outside this circle, the Jesuits of the mission huddled as though beleaguered, drab figures in long black cassocks, their wide-brimmed hats looped up at the sides. Farther down the riverbank, the majority of the population of New France, some one hundred colonists, artisans, fur company employees and soldiers, strolled about among the remaining Savages of the Algonkian band, who were now eating their share of the Commandant’s feast. These, the younger men, together with the women and children, crowded around a bank of smoking fires on which were placed cooking kettles containing a stinking mess of bear meat, fat, fish, and sagamité. The Savages ate gluttonously from the kettles, stopping from time to time to wipe their greasy fingers on their hair or on the coats of their dogs, which ran barking around the fires in search of discarded scraps.
In the centre of the council circle, Samuel de Champlain looked to his interpreter, who gave a slight nod, warning that the time had come for him to speak. He rose, bowed to the leaders, then settled himself again in his armchair and beckoned to the group of priests. At once, Father Paul Laforgue rose and came to the Commandant’s side, a slight, pale man, thin-bearded, intellectual, but with a strange determination in the eyes and narrow mouth. Champlain turned to the Savage leaders and pointed to Father Bourque and the other Jesuits. ‘These are our Fathers,’ Champlain said. ‘We love them more than we love ourselves. The whole of the French nation loves them. They do not go among you for your furs. They have left their friends and their country to show you the way to heaven. If you love the French as you say you love them, then love and honour these, our Fathers. And, in particular, I, Agnonha, commend to you Father Laforgue, who is going far into the land of the Hurons. I say to those of you who will accompany him on his journey, guard him well. And now I place this beloved Father in your care.’
As the speech was translated, sentence by sentence, the assembly of Savages uttered the customary ejaculations of approval. The guttural sounds reminded Champlain of animals groaning in pain, but he smiled contentedly. They also meant the journey had been approved.
Two leaders rose and squatted before him. One began to speak. In the traditional manner of the Savages, he first repeated what Champlain had said and then summarized what had been said on this subject on previous occasions. The Savages, having no written language, conducted all their affairs in this manner, constantly astonishing the French by their remarkable feats of recall. The leader went on to proclaim Algonkian fealty to the French in general and to Champlain in particular. His speech recalled the time, more than twenty-five years before, when Champlain, whom the Savages called Agnonha, or ‘Iron Man’, had buckled on his steel armour and gone forth with the Algonkin and Huron to fight against and kill the Iroquois, their traditional enemy.
When the speech was finished, Champlain uttered some words of gratitude, then rose to signal an end to the parley. At once, Chomina and Neehatin, the leaders of the hunting party that would accompany Laforgue, went to the priest and embraced him as a sign that he had been given into their trust.
Satisfied, Champlain signalled to his officers and left the gathering. As he walked under the balcony of the trading post of the Company of One Hundred Associates of New France, Martin Doumergue, the chief clerk of the post, rose and bowed to his Excellency. Behind Doumergue, Pierre Tallevant, his assistant, newly arrived from France, concealed a half-filled bottle of brandy behind his back as he bowed in turn. Both men watched as the Commandant and his officers set off up the steep path in the direction of Champlain’s fort.
‘Why is the Commandant dressed like a Savage?’ Tallevant asked, as he again produced the bottle and filled his superior’s glass.
Doumergue laughed. ‘You mean the fur robe? It’s a present from the chiefs. Anyway, it’s symbolic, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, without the fur trade none of us would be in this colony.’
‘Colony?’ Tallevant said. ‘Why do they call it a colony? Look at that mob out there. Where are the colonists? Where are the families who’re going to settle this place? The English have colonists, the Dutch have colonists, but what do we have? Fur traders and priests.’
Doumergue drank, then placed his glass on the railing of the balcony. ‘Do you blame us?’ he asked. ‘I mean, would you bring a woman out here? I want to show you something.’
Unsteady in drink, Tallevant rose and went to the railing.
‘Look over there,’ Doumergue said. ‘See that Savage with a musket on his back?’
‘The one eating from the kettle?’
‘Right. Know who that is? It’s Jean Mercier.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That’s Mercier, I tell you,’ Doumergue said. ‘He’s just been up-country with one of their hunting parties, buying pelts. See? He dresses like them now. He even eats their food.’
Tallevant stared uneasily at the almost naked figure biting into a piece of bear meat, the animal hair still on the half-cooked flesh. The man wore European hunting boots, not the soft shoes made of skins which a real Savage would use. Could this be the Rouennais fur trader whose accounts Tallevant had seen entered in the Company’s ledgers in Caen? He turned to Doumergue. ‘What happened to him? Is he drunk or mad?’
‘No, no. He likes the life.’
‘But how can he? That stinking food, the flies, the smells, the way they live.’
‘The way they live?’ Martin Doumergue laughed. ‘They live for their pleasure, for a full belly. They live to hunt and fish. They do no work, the Algonkin. And, most important, they let him fuck their young girls. He likes that. He likes to hunt, he likes to get away from the life the priests would have us live here, praying and fasting and all that. He’s free up there. And he’s not the only one. I have twenty-one traders on my books. In five years, if they stay here, most of them will be like Mercier.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Tallevant said.
‘And if we do bring in colonists,’ Doumergue said, ‘the same thing will happen to them. Do you think I’d bring a woman out and marry her and settle here? What for? So that my sons will grow up half savage, running naked in the woods, then dying of starvation when the snows come?’
Uneasily, Tallevant looked back at the tall figure of the trader, the lank greasy hair, the thin loins, the buttocks bare beneath the breechclout. Doumergue is wrong; it must be drink or madness. To go from all that we know and are back to that brutish state? ‘It makes no sense,’ he said aloud.
‘Doesn’t it? It makes sense to me. We’re not colonizing the Savages. They’re colonizing us. Even the Commandant in that smelly fur robe is happier here than he ever was in France.’
Tallevant refilled his glass and drank. The brandy fumes rose in his head. ‘Well, not me,’ he said. ‘When my contract is up. I’m going home.’
Martin Doumergue looked at him. ‘Will you? I wonder. Will any of us?’
*
The two Savages who had risen to embrace Paul Laforgue at the conclusion of the Commandant’s feast now led him to the temporary encampment of the Algonkin, their brightly painted faces grinning in a manner which made him think of medieval masquers on feast days in his native Normandy. As he entered the encampment he was surrounded by a crowd of Savage women, the married ones prematurely aged and worn by toil, the young girls shamefully loose in their clothing, brazen and carefree as the gleeful, unruly Savage children who ran behind him, pinching and pulling him as though he were a toy for their amusement. Straining to hear through the dull ringing of his infected left ear, Laforgue understood that the Savage women were asking what food he would bring on the journey, would he have tobacco, did he have brandy to give them. Faces crowded close, white teeth set off by sun-browned skin, handsome, merry dark eyes, long dark hair: these faces, these people will be my only companions, save Daniel, when tomorrow we set out upriver.
Laforgue had never lived in an encampment of Savages. With the exception of Father Bourque, none of the priests now in the Québec residence had travelled as he would travel, sleeping outdoors or in Savage shelters, eating only Savage food. ‘It is travel of the most difficult sort,’ the Superior had warned him. ‘Yet it is also the most advantageous way in which to make the journey. For if you travel with a hunting party of men, women and children, there is always the chance that, if a child or an adult falls ill en route, a soul can be gained for God by a deathbed baptism. Father Brabant and others have written in the Relations that each time they journeyed to the Huron lands they had the great privilege of saving at least one soul in this manner. Remember, such a blessing will more than justify all the perils and discomforts you may suffer.’
Now, remembering the Superior’s words, Laforgue forced a smile as he endured the badgering of the Savage children: one tugging at the beads of his rosary as if to break them; another pulling at his beard and calling him a hairy dog, for the Savages were not bearded and pulled out their own sparse facial hair, considering it to be ugly. A third child, a giggling little girl, kept trying to slip her hand through the buttons of Laforgue’s cassock and fondle his genitals. The Savages paid no attention to this, for it was unheard of for them to punish or restrain their children in any way. And so, as the little imp persisted, Laforgue lifted her up and put her aside, then tried to make his way clear of the crowd. But the Savage women laughingly restrained him and now, thinking longingly of his cell, where at this hour he would kneel alone in a time of prayer, he decided to invoke Captain Clock. Raising his hands as if to address the crowd, he shouted, ‘Wait! Captain Clock says I must go home. Captain says it is time for me to go.’
‘Where is the Captain?’ an old Savage woman asked. ‘Are you hiding the Captain now?’
‘No, the Captain is in our house. But he spoke this morning. Excuse me, I must go now.’
‘Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong!’ The old woman, her face a web of tiny creases, imitated the sound of the striking clock in a manner inhuman in its accuracy.
‘Stop!’ cried a Savage after the fourth sound. All exploded in laughter. Chomina, the leader who had escorted Laforgue into the encampment, took him by the hand and cleared a passage for him among the laughing throng. ‘Go then, Nicanis,’ he said, using the name the Algonkin had given Laforgue. ‘Go home to the Captain and tell him that tomorrow, at first light, we await you here.’
‘Till tomorrow,’ Laforgue said. The Savages were still. Even the children ceased their movements. They stood, watching him in silence, as he walked away from their fires, going downriver to the place where the traders lay about drinking. As Laforgue approached this place, he saw Daniel, standing in the shadow of the trees, waiting for him.
‘I have a canoe, Father. I will take you back to the residence.’
‘Good,’ Laforgue said, then looked at the boy. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, Father.’
But something was wrong, he was sure of it. It was as though Daniel were fearful, and as they continued on he saw that the boy moved high on the riverbank as though to avoid the place between the trees where the traders were. A sensible precaution, no doubt, for one could never be sure of the traders’ mood, especially when it was a public holiday and they had been drinking. As though to confirm this thought, male voices shouted and then Laforgue heard a sudden scream. A Savage girl ran out from the trees, long-legged and awkward as a foal about to fall. The girl was tall and slender and dressed for some Savage ceremony, wearing only a short kilt from waist to knee and a collar and necklace of the blue and purple beads which the Savages fashioned from the inside of shells. She ran directly towards Laforgue and Daniel, then swerved as though they were a wall, twisting about to run away downriver. As she did, Laforgue saw a Savage come from the trees in pursuit. The Savage was drunk; he wore hunting boots which were not made for running and now, as he lurched past Laforgue, he skidded and fell, his half-naked body subsiding in a dusty cloud near the soft mud of the river’s edge. Laforgue looked at Daniel, who, ignoring the fallen Savage, was staring after the fleeing girl. He took the boy’s arm, seeking to hurry him away from these occasions of lust, but as they passed the sprawled figure of the Savage, the man twisted around and caught the skirt of Laforgue’s cassock, forcing him to stop. The Savage looked up, his eyes muddied with drink, then said in French, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
‘Come, Father,’ Daniel said. ‘Pay no attention.’
‘Wait.’ Laforgue stared in astonishment at the Savage. ‘You speak French?’
‘Imperfectly,’ said the Savage. ‘And I would prefer not to.’
At once, Laforgue knelt beside the man and made the sign of the cross, for this Savage must be a Christian. Where did he come from, how did he learn such good French, how did he know, in French, those words which were a request that a priest hear one’s confession? ‘I cannot confess you now, my son,’ Laforgue said gently. ‘You are drunk.’
The Savage smiled. Suddenly, behind him in the trees, Laforgue heard laughter and knew that he had been played a trick. This Savage was not an Algonkin but one of those renegade French traders, the coureurs de bois, who went in the woods with the Savages and affected their heathen ways. And as Laforgue turned to see who mocked him, half a dozen other men of this sort came from the trees. With them were three half-naked Savage girls. The traders were half-stripped themselves, their hair and bodies decked with Savage feathers and coloured beads. All were drunk.
It was no place for a priest. ‘Come, Daniel,’ he said, but as he tried to rise from his kneeling position, the false Savage pulled again on his cassock, causing him to stumble before he managed to free himself.
Daniel had already gone ahead, and as Laforgue started after him, the traders’ laughter loud in his ears, he saw the boy run in the direction of the Savage girl, who had circled and was coming back. Daniel began calling out to her, and so Laforgue turned his good ear in that direction. But heard, as so often in the past weeks, only a dull, distant sound. What was Daniel saying? He should not speak to her. She might be drunk. In drink, the Savages believed that a devil took possession of them. If a drunken Savage killed another, the Savages did not hold him responsible for his action, and so it was dangerous to go near them when they were in that condition. But as Laforgue drew closer he saw Daniel grip the girl’s arm.
‘Let her be,’ he called.
‘Go back to your people,’ Daniel said, and this time Laforgue heard his words. ‘Go on, go at once.’ He looked as though he would strike the girl, but at that moment she twisted free of his grip and ran to the renegade trader, who rose, lewdly holding out his arms in welcome, his breechclout awry, his penis erect and sticking up.
‘Come away now,’ Laforgue said, his face hot with anger at the sight of the trader’s shame. But Daniel moved ahead of him.
‘Let me be,’ the boy said, but stared open-mouthed at the scene below them on the bank, the trader embracing the girl as she began to fondle his penis, he pulling her short skirt up over her buttocks.
It was a sight the devil had sent, and Laforgue would have none of it. With a strength that surprised him, he caught hold of Daniel and turned him away, saying, ‘Let’s go back. We must get ready. We are leaving at first light tomorrow.’
