Black robe, p.4
Black Robe, page 4
And saw in the boy’s face a stupefaction as though the sight of lust had robbed him of all sense.
‘Where is the canoe?’ Laforgue asked. ‘Where did you leave the canoe?’
But the boy pulled back, as though to look again at the scene of lechery.
‘Come away,’ Laforgue said. ‘Don’t look at that. It is a sin to look.’
‘I wasn’t looking,’ the boy said. There were tears in his eyes. ‘This way,’ he said, in an angry, strangled voice, and started off at a fast pace, leaving Laforgue behind as they ran to the place where the mission canoe was moored. Why was he crying? But then Laforgue reminded himself that Daniel was a sheltered child brought up by a priestly uncle in a small Norman village. What would a boy like that know of such lewd debauchery?
‘You should punish him,’ the boy said suddenly, as he untied the canoe. ‘If you tell Father Bourque, Father Bourque will tell the Commandant and he will be put in the stocks. It’s what he deserves. Disrespect for religion is a sin and forbidden.’
‘But Mercier is a Huguenot,’ Laforgue said. ‘He is not of our faith.’
‘Even so. It is forbidden. You should tell the Commandant.’
‘Yes, yes, it is my duty,’ Laforgue said. ‘But we are leaving tomorrow and I have not time – I mean, I cannot find it in my heart. He was drunk. He was confused.’
‘Mercier confused?’ Daniel said, pushing the canoe out into the shallows. He stood, steadying the canoe so that Laforgue could climb in. ‘Mercier doesn’t give a damn, about God or France or anything. We should tell Father Bourque.’
‘Daniel,’ Laforgue said. ‘Father Bourque has enough to trouble him, don’t you think?’
The boy, silent, bent over the prow of the canoe, paddling skilfully as a Savage.
‘Tomorrow we start our journey,’ Laforgue said. ‘That is what we must think of now. Let us ask God’s forgiveness for our sins and for this man’s sins also. Don’t you agree?’
At last, he saw Daniel half turn his head and nod agreement. But his body still shook with sobs. He is still a child, Laforgue reminded himself. It is my duty to protect him.
2
‘We are ready,’ Chomina said.
Neehatin did not answer. He was looking at the Blackrobes. The chief Blackrobe now stood near the water. The Blackrobe Nicanis and the Norman boy went down on their knees before him. The chief Blackrobe raised his right hand, the hand open like a knife. He made a downward movement, then a sideways movement. The two who knelt bowed their heads beneath this movement as the chief Blackrobe spoke some words in their tongue.
‘What are they doing?’ Chomina asked.
‘It is some fucking sorcery,’ Neehatin told him. ‘They make that sign to silence their enemies. You have divided their food up among our canoes?’
‘I have done it.’
‘Where are the six muskets?’
‘Three in my canoe, three in yours. And I have placed the powder and shot in a skin, as you said.’
‘We will not use the muskets until we reach the hunting ground,’ Neehatin said. ‘Those Norman pigs have given only half the powder and shot I asked for. Besides, we have to learn how to shoot them.’
‘The Norman boy knows how.’
‘Fuck him,’ Neehatin said. ‘We will learn ourselves.’
He looked at the riverbank. The boy and the Blackrobe had risen from their knees, and now they went forward to put their arms around the chief Blackrobe as though he were some woman. Neehatin looked back at his own people. They waited. There were twenty-six, including women and children. He looked at the sky. The moon sat pale in the clouds as day came out of night. The sky gave no sign against their leaving.
Neehatin walked down to the Blackrobes. He smiled at them. ‘We are ready,’ he said.
*
Laforgue knelt in the narrow canoe, the paddle resting on his knees, his wooden clogs tied around his neck, his head bare to the cool morning breeze. Behind him a Savage woman steadied the canoe with light strokes of her paddle. Three dogs sat on skins which covered the cargo, and at the front a male Savage held the craft in mid-stream, waiting, looking back to where the other canoes were moving off from shore. On the riverbank, Fathers Bourque, Bonnet and Meynard lined up in a row, waving their hats in a gesture of farewell. There were five canoes in all: the Savages travelled in family groups, the children and dogs sitting on the goods, the women paddling in the middle, the men in front and at the rear, steering and guiding the craft. Laforgue saw Daniel in the canoe behind his own and, ahead, Neehatin, the leader, who now raised his hand in a gesture which at once set all in movement. The canoes, incredibly light and fragile for their heavy burdens, glided swiftly into the slipstream, using the ebb flow to avoid moving against the main current. Laforgue looked back at the huddle of wooden settlements, at the steep cliffs and, above them, at the earth and timber ramparts enclosing the modest stone edifice of Champlain’s fort, which was the principal building of New France. As he did, from the ramparts came a puff of smoke and the roar of cannon. Alarmed and astonished, the Savages looked up. Neehatin, standing in his canoe, called out that the cannon fire was an honour, a salute from the Normans for their journey. Delighted, laughing, the Savages bowed to their stroke. The canoes sped on. The Savages, as was their way, fell silent, the only noise now the slap of paddles in quiet waters.
Two years ago, before leaving France, Laforgue had journeyed to his home in Rouen to say an anniversary mass for the repose of his dead father’s soul. After the ceremony, he and his mother walked back to her house, passing through the Place du Vieux Marché. It was a wet and windy spring day; rain beat on the roofs of the timbered Norman houses in the square. His mother, holding her cloak over her head, turned from her normal homeward path and crossed the square to that spot, marked by a cross, where, two hundred years before, faggots had been piled high to burn Saint Joan of Arc at the stake. His mother stopped at this holy place and, in the driving rain, knelt in prayer while Laforgue stood, awkward, not wanting to interrupt her devotions, not willing to kneel on the wet cobbles amid passing strangers. When she rose, her skirts wet, her stockings awry, his mother turned to him and said, ‘I prayed for you, Paul. I prayed for you here. Do you know why?’
‘No, maman.’
‘Because God has chosen you, just as He chose the Maid.’
Her words made him blush. Surely it was foolish to compare him with a saint like Joan of Arc, but still it was true that ever since the Order had granted his petition to be sent to New France he had dreamed of the glory of martyrdom in that faraway land.
‘Come,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘Let’s go home. You’re soaking. You will get your death of cold.’
His mother gripped him tightly as they set off. ‘Promise me,’ she said. ‘Promise that when you go there, you will remember me in your daily prayers.’
‘Of course, of course,’ he said. ‘I always do, maman.’
‘No, no, listen to me. God will hear your prayer as He will not hear mine. He will hear you as He did the Maid. For He has chosen you to die for Him. I will never see you again.’
‘Maman, please. You mustn’t compare me with Saint Joan. I’m not a saint. Come. Let’s go home.’
Now in the silence of the great river, watching a flock of geese fly over distant treetops, Laforgue heard again his mother’s words. In the past two years, living in the residence at Québec, every waking moment had been a preparation for this day: the time spent learning the unwritten Algonkian and Huron tongues, studying the writings of Father Brabant on the customs and language of the Savage peoples, the hours of practice in canoes, a scrupulous diligence in all tasks assigned to him, no matter how onerous or menial, and, above all, constant daily prayer, beseeching Saint Joseph and the Virgin to intercede on his behalf and grant him the honour of some greater danger in a lonely place. From the day the Savage, Ihongwaha, brought Father Brabant’s letter telling of sickness in the Huron country, he had prayed in nightly vigils that he would be the chosen one. For, indeed, this was a journey like those he had read of long ago in the Jesuit house in Dieppe, a mission worthy of the Order’s heroic martyrs in Paraguay, a mission to the very place where Father Brabant laboured, he whom the Hurons revered, whose letters published in the Relations were an inspiration to all at home in France. And now his prayers had been answered. Today he set out for that place where martyrdom was more than just a pious hope. This is my hour. This is my beginning.
The day passed. The sun, high in the sky, dipped until it barely cleared the tops of the trees. A wind rippled the water into waves, a wind which numbed Laforgue’s cheeks. He remembered what Father Bourque had told him of a second false summer which came in mid-October, bringing a few days of heat at the end of the autumnal season. That false summer was ending. Winter was near.
The sun fell below the tree line. Shadows moved across the surface of the water. Neehatin called out a command and at once the canoes turned, gliding towards a small tributary inlet. There, the Savages disembarked, pulling their canoes clear of the water. Laforgue, his limbs aching from hours of kneeling, walked stiffly up to the clearing where the Algonkin, with the ordered bustle of long practice, had begun to make preparations for camp. Neehatin and Chomina, the captains, assembled the men and then dispersed them among the trees. Some carried bows and arrows, others long spears like javelins, others hatchets and clubs. Daniel, taking his gun, joined one of the groups but called to Laforgue, ‘Stay here, Father. They say there is a chance of game. We’ll be back in an hour or so.’
‘Will I come with you?’
The boy shook his head. Men and dogs disappeared in the undergrowth. A sudden clamour of voices filled the clearing as women passed by, carrying long poles of spruce saplings which they had just cut down. Laforgue sat for a moment watching the noisy children run about in the open space; then, remembering that it would soon be dark, he began to read his breviary. But the familiar book seemed strange in this place, and the Latin sentences jumbled in his head.
He looked up. In the centre of the clearing some of the younger women had raised the long poles to converge in a sort of roof, while older ones brought from the canoes sheets of birch bark, which they unrolled, and then assembled to make the walls of the habitation. Still others dragged green spruce boughs from the nearby forest, spreading them in a vast carpet to provide a bed on which all could sleep. The work was long and arduous. The horizon took on the pale pink blush of the dying sun.
He looked at the words on his page and thought of the Jesuit house in Dieppe at this the hour of the evening office, when priests walked in the cloister, reading their breviaries, silent and absorbed. He had been one of them. But from now on he would read his office in some clearing in a strange forest, or behind the wooden palisades of a distant mission house. He looked again at the rabble of Savage women, emaciated, burdened by years of toil, limbs gnarled, faces worn by sun and wind; at the brown, laughing girls; at the children, wild as the forest which was their home. With these people he would live for years, perhaps for the rest of his life. A sudden sadness came upon him. He looked up at the pink orb of sky. A rush of tiny black birds whirled like commas across the clearing and disappeared among the treetops in a twittering swirl. He heard distant cries and, minutes later, the first male Savages came out of the forest. Their mood was jubilant. They held aloft, for the women’s admiration, the slain bodies of hares and quail.
Fires were lit. The large kettles in which the Savages cooked all their food were brought up from the canoes and hung on poles which slanted over the fire. Gradually, as the sky darkened, the rest of the hunters returned. All were empty-handed until Chomina, the hunting captain, appeared with three other men, carrying on a long pole the slung body of a deer. Shouts of joy filled the air. The Algonkin butchered the deer and threw it into the kettles with the other carcasses. Then Laforgue saw Daniel come in empty-handed, stowing his gun in its hide pouch.
‘Daniel?’
‘Father Paul.’
Daniel came over. He seemed distraught. He took off his beaver cap, and Laforgue noticed that he had braided his long hair in the Algonkian manner.
‘They have killed a deer,’ Daniel said. ‘That means we will not make an early start tomorrow.’
‘But we must have an early start,’ Laforgue said. ‘I will speak to Neehatin. We must go at first light.’
As he spoke, darkness seeped through the crepuscular light in the clearing. The bodies of the Savages became silhouettes, moving around the flame-lit circle of fires. Dogs ran about, barking, chased by children who tormented them. In the light of the fires, the faces of the older Savages seemed inhuman as wooden masks. Then, as the first pieces of half-cooked meat were taken from a pot, Neehatin rose, cut a slice from a haunch of deer, and came to Laforgue, holding it on his knife. ‘Here, Nicanis,’ he said. ‘Eat this. Now you will truly eat.’
This was the Savage phrase of hospitality. Laforgue took the greasy meat in his hands. Hair and skin still adhered to it. ‘Now I will truly eat,’ he said and, conquering his nausea, bit into the half-cooked flesh. Men came up smiling, as Neehatin took a second piece of meat and gave it to Daniel, saying, ‘Now, Iwanchou,’ for this was the name the Algonkin had given the boy.
‘Fucking good deer meat,’ one Savage said.
‘Eat, fucking eat,’ another said.
Laforgue winced at the foul words. ‘They speak as dogs would speak, if they had tongues,’ Father Bourque had said about their filthy banter. ‘Remember it is not meant badly. We must ignore it. They will not change.’ He watched them eat. ‘Gluttony is their highest form of happiness,’ the Superior had told him. ‘They cannot be made to hoard their food against a time when there is none. Corn for their sagamité is the only food they will save.’ And Father Brabant, in his letters to Father Provincial, had once joked that the only prayer the Savages would make to God, was ‘Give us each day elk, beaver, and moose.’ Laforgue looked at the greasy half-cooked meat. He had been warned that not to eat offered food was, to the Savages, an insult to the one who had offered it, and so he looked for a place where he might dispose of his portion without being seen. Daniel had moved close to the fires, squatting in the Savage fashion, contentedly calling out in the Algonkian tongue to those near him. Laforgue moved into the shadows, going downriver. As he did, a dog ran after him, jumping up, trying to get a scrap of meat. Using this as a solution, he allowed the animal to get its teeth into the flesh, then let go of his portion. The dog at once ran off into the undergrowth with its prize.
It rained. A drizzle became a downpour. The fires hissed. Women ran to the canoes to make sure the bundles were covered. The other Savages, ignoring the rain, ate stolidly until the kettles were empty. Then, soaking wet, they entered the night’s habitation. Laforgue, sheltering under a tree, saw Neehatin come towards the forest and, turning his good ear in the leader’s direction, heard his name.
‘Nicanis? Nicanis?’
‘Neehatin, you called me?’
‘Nicanis, have you eaten?’
‘I have truly eaten.’
‘Then let us go in,’ Neehatin said. ‘It will rain all night.’
And so, following his host, Laforgue entered the bark habitation, pulling aside the bearskin covering which served as a door. Inside, on the bed of spruce boughs, were huddled all the Savage families, men, women and children, curled in foetal positions or lying on their backs with knees drawn up. Huddled against them or on top of them were their dogs. Laforgue saw Daniel lying in one of these groups, his cloak drawn up to cover his face as though he already slept.
‘Here, Nicanis,’ Neehatin said, pushing aside a woman to make a place for the priest. ‘Lie there. You will be well.’
Obediently Laforgue curled up, his back to an old woman, his face uncomfortably close to a young male who put his arm around the priest as though they were children in the same bed. Dogs crawled over the bodies of the sleepers, looking for a place to lie. A child cried. Two men conversed in low voices. Rain drummed steadily on the birch-bark roof and dripped into the dwelling from a large hole in the top of the habitation which opened on the night sky. The bed of spruce was surprisingly soft and Laforgue buried his face in the boughs, hoping that the smell of the needles would dull the sickly odour of unwashed bodies. He tried, as was his nightly custom, to direct his last waking thoughts to the crucifixion of Jesus. But the old woman behind him kicked him in the back as she rolled over, snoring. The fetid smell of the Savages’ breath lay like a low cloud in the confined space, and gradually he became aware of giggles as young girls and boys crawled about in search of each other. He pulled his hat down over his eyes to shut out that which he should not see, but as he did a girl came close to him and he felt his penis stiffen.
How can I sleep in a place like this? I should go out and sleep under the trees. But what about the nights ahead, when the cold will make it impossible to survive outside and alone? This is a test. It is God’s wish that I remain here.
Burrowing his face in the branches, he tried to shut out the sound of the lascivious giggles. He began to pray, automatically at first, but at last the words became prayer. O Lord, I give Thee thanks. Thou hast brought me here.
*
Neehatin woke. The dream filled his mind. He did not know what it commanded, but it must be obeyed. The fact that he had dreamed it on the first night of a journey meant it signalled a danger ahead. But what danger? He must divine what it said. He got up and made his way through the mass of sleeping bodies. As he passed his wife, he kicked her in the small of the back, signalling her to rise and follow him. He went out. The sky was quiet. The rain had stopped. Above the forest, the moon watched him as he walked across the clearing. He looked into the forest. The forest was still asleep. He squatted down on the riverbank, facing the waters.
He heard his wife’s footsteps in the clearing. In the Iroquois nation women had power in council, but Neehatin’s people treated their wives as they did their dogs. Neehatin did not understand why his people behaved thus. His wife had the gift of sight. He looked at her as she came towards him under the gaze of the moon. She was ugly with many winters and bent with the burdens of carrying, cooking and making shelter. Her children did not help her. All were males. When she came up, she squatted down beside him and he knew that she knew. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I dreamed.’
