Barkskins (7 page)

“Attention!” he cried. “Will the guests please enter.”

There was an excited murmur and anticipatory cheers.

Inside the drawing room the guests sat on still-splintery plank benches, taking in the parquet floor, the ornamented
couvre-feu,
gaping at the fairy-like chandelier, its crystal prisms shattering the candle flames into a thousand darts that contributed the feeling of a cathedral to the marriage ceremony. The Wobik women gazed enviously at the elaborate wrought-iron chimney crane that could hold pots in three positions.

•  •  •

After the ceremony, the celebration began. Elphège built up the bonfire and the flames threw flaring shadows on the scene. The guests approached the table, the
voyageurs
rushing, stabbing and hacking, the Wobik residents picking at the feast meats with refined airs felt they were in fine society. Monsieur Trépagny produced bottles of many shapes: red wine, rum, brandy, whiskey—even champagne, real French champagne. Two of the
voyageurs
brought out fiddles and began to play while the others clapped and sang. The loud music and the violent stamping of the dancers, their sashes whipping and curling in the firelight as they leapt, drove off any pretensions to gentility. Even the red-faced bride danced, and Monsieur Trépagny was a madman of athletic brilliance. The distorted sound bounced off the forest trees and any nearby evil spirits shrank into the earth until it should be over. Under a bush, covered with a dish towel, waited the cornmeal pudding with its potent water hemlock seeds, Mari's farewell dish for Monsieur Trépagny. She waited for the right moment to present it.

•  •  •

The sky was light when the last dancers rolled up in their blankets under the spruce. Only the
voyageurs
were still awake, sitting around the fire and passing one of the endless bottles. René pumped them for more information on Duquet.

Duquet, they said, was clever. He had friends high in the fur company. He knew important men. He made side deals, keeping all the marten pelts for himself. He brought forbidden whiskey into the north and got the Indians too drunk to strike any but the feeblest and most disadvantageous bargains for their furs. “And Duquet is very strong, the strongest among us. He has great endurance.” To be strong was everything. Duquet was becoming a legend of the country.

René thought the
seigneur
had retired with his prize, but he now saw Monsieur Trépagny standing on the other side of the fire, listening. The flames paled in the brightening morning.

“This Duquet,” Monsieur Trépagny said, beginning quietly, but speaking in a quickening, sharpening tempo, his eyes bulging and beginning to roll. “Duquet? Would that be Duquet who signed a contract to work for me for three years?” His voice rose to a furious bellow. “Would that be the
Duquet
who ran away like a dog? Is
that
the Duquet of whom you speak?” He looked at his brothers.

Toussaint said nothing, his beard limp and stained, but Fernand rolled his wicked Trépagny eyes at his bridegroom brother and said “
Ouais.
The same. He told us you were cruel.”

“Ah,” said Monsieur Trépagny. “He does not yet know how cruel I can be. Do you return to Wobik now? I will go with you. I will have the dog's skull. He will serve out his three years and we will see who is cruel.”

“Brother,” said Toussaint, “you would do well to leave Duquet alone. He is a dangerous man.” Monsieur Trépagny, goaded by this apostasy, screamed
“Saddle my horse”
at Elphège.

“Your pudding?” said Mari, holding out the cold pot. But René noticed how the
seigneur
glared at her as he rushed into his house.

In the few minutes it took Monsieur Trépagny to make his excuse to his new wife for his precipitous departure, Toussaint and Fernand ran to the riverbank, leapt into Monsieur Trépagny's canoe and began to paddle like demons, forty-five paddle strokes a minute, downstream toward Wobik. Monsieur Trépagny's horse was slower, and when he galloped into Wobik in late afternoon the traitorous brothers and Duquet were gone. The stolen canoe lay onshore, a marten pelt draped over the thwart—Duquet's mocking signature.

The bridegroom, exhausted and furious, slumped on the deputy's porch until that official returned home from the wedding, then swore out a warrant for Duquet's capture and return.

“I will not rest until I get him and when I do he will suffer.”

Monsieur Bouchard was thrilled by this pledge of vengeance, like something in an old ballad, but he had no idea how he could execute the warrant and told Monsieur Trépagny so.

“It will happen,” gritted Trépagny through stained teeth.

Mari turned the cornmeal pudding into the embers where at first it gave off a savory smell and then the unpleasant odor of burning grain and sugar; she walked back to the old house. The grey jay that watched everything below waited a day until the ashes were cold and then pecked inquisitively at the burned lump. A few days later Chama discovered the bird's carcass with legs twisted into a sailor's knot, a very strange sight.

Monsieur Trépagny returned to his house in the forest and brooded for some weeks while preparing his expedition into the wilderness to capture Duquet. There was a strange turn in his mind that moved him to delay. He more and more left his new wife to herself and spent much time in his old house with Mari, whom he had forbidden to go back to the mission. Under his direction she cooked handsome dishes and every evening Monsieur Trépagny put on his fine clothes and carried them to Madame Trépagny. There was no cornmeal pudding. The husband and wife dined in silence in the elegant dining room and after dinner, when the maid had cleared the table, when Monsieur Trépagny had drunk a glass of brandy, he said, “Good evening, madame,” and returned to Mari. Nothing seemed changed. Mari and her children talked and laughed together in low voices as ever, and their pleasure in each other's company irritated Trépagny, who hissed
“Silence!”
René wondered, too, what she had to say to them in such long ropes of talk, often accompanied by gestures and widened eyes. Months later he understood that she had been telling them the old Mi'kmaw stories, and into the warp of that heritage had interwoven the woof of complicated jokes and language games that gave her people so much pleasure. But Trépagny was sure that he was the butt of their half-smothered laughter, and his red nostrils flared and he demanded silence.

One morning, when René and Chama were cutting in the forest, the Spanish maid appeared and went to the old man. She handed him a letter, telling him Madame Trépagny wished him to carry it to the deputy in Wobik. Chama snorted and shook his head, but when she held up a gold coin he took the letter and put it in his shirt.

His beaver robe was empty for two nights, and it was dusk of the third day before René saw him again, carrying Monsieur Trépagny's captured canoe, his excuse for the trip if his nephew should ask.

“What's afoot?” asked René.

“Nothing good. Monsieur Bouchard turned the color of mud when he read that letter. He said he would come here tomorrow with the priest and consult with Madame and my nephew. It's a bad business.”

M
onsieur Bouchard and Père Perreault entered the clearing riding double on Monsieur Bouchard's old plow horse. René, hauling a basket of fish, straightened up and stared. The visitors passed the storehouse without stopping, heading for Monsieur Trépagny's marriage house. But that elevated gentleman, who had been working at his old forge, saw them through the open door and rushed out. “Where do you go, Monsieur Bouchard? Père Perreault, what do you here?”

The deputy wheeled around, dismounted and glared at Monsieur Trépagny. Père Perreault got down as well and held the reins.

Monsieur Bouchard said, “It is distressing that I find you here and not at your grand house with your lawful wife, Madame Trépagny. I have had a letter from the lady, who complains that you continue to live with the Indian woman, Mari, and are rarely seen at that wedding mansion in which she is lawfully ensconced and where you should be.”

Père Perreault spoke in a serious tone: “She wishes to return to her uncle's house in France and demands the return of the rich dowry given you as you have broken your marriage pledge. You have behaved badly and the lady is within her rights. The uncle is a powerful man. He has taken up the matter and it will be a serious thing for you—and your position as
seigneur.
I ask you to accompany us to that house where she now awaits alleviation of her painful and insulting situation.”

Monsieur Trépagny followed them silently into the gloom of the west trail.

The day passed slowly. René told Chama and Mari what he had seen and heard. He thought a little smile flickered across Mari's face. When she went inside Chama said, “This nephew should have proceeded in his search for Duquet. He should have stayed with that rich wife. Whenever there is an Indian woman involved there is trouble. His French wife is not the kind to shut her eyes.”

Night came and still they did not return. Chama said, “Claude will be begging her, he will grant anything she wishes rather than lose the money and the important position. I know him.”

Very early the next morning, as René and Chama were readying for another day of clearing trees, the three men, all in good humor, returned.

“Tell him at once,” said Père Perreault. “At once.” And they all looked at René.

“What? What is it?” he said. He had still not had a chance to talk to Monsieur Trépagny about his land, and he was afraid now that the
seigneur
had found a way to evade the responsibility.

“You will marry Mari,” said Monsieur Trépagny. “Immediately. Père Perreault is on hand to officiate.”

“No!” cried René. He whispered, not wishing to be overheard by Mari. “She is old. I do not want to marry her.” He had dreamed of a wife from one of the consignment ships with women from France, the King's girls—
les filles du Roi.
A charming and shy young woman with blue eyes. “Also, you and Mari—”

“It was only a country marriage.” Père Perreault let the words slide out in his gentle way. “Just a country custom.”

“But no,” said René.

“You do not yet see reason,” said Monsieur Trépagny pleasantly. “She will help you make a house of your own on the land I grant you, and I will be very generous. I will grant you a double portion of land. You will have good workers to aid you—those Indian boys Elphège and Theotiste and that servant girl Renardette. Mari is a clever cook. She will warm you on winter nights. She is adept in curing illness. She has value. What more could you want?”

Mari herself was standing in the doorway, listening without expression. Père Perreault signed to her to come near. René thought furiously in several directions. But to himself he added another reason to Monsieur Trépagny's list: with Mari at his side he could learn to read and write or, even better, depend on her to do whatever reading and writing was needed. The blue-eyed
fille du roi
of his dreams vanished. Again he felt himself caught in the sweeping current of events he was powerless to escape. What could he do against the commands of more important men? He nodded once, yes, he would marry Mari, an old Indian woman. So it was done.

•  •  •

In every life there are events that reshape one's sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed. For René the great blow had been the loss of Achille, his brother, whom he loved and most dreadfully missed. He came to New France to escape the loss, not realizing he would carry sorrow enclosed within him. The second event was the forced marriage to Mari.

Monsieur Trépagny made a formal assignment of land to René, granting him the old
domus
and workshop and the gardens but not the cow, as well as the clearing to the west that René coveted and the land with clear water springing from under a yellow birch. René was, in one stroke, a man of property. Père Perreault and Monsieur Bouchard left soon after the brief ceremony with Monsieur Trépagny's signature on René's land assignment.

Monsieur Trépagny spoke with casual sarcasm to Mari. “Madame Sel. Cook dinner as you always do and Chama will bring it to my lady wife and myself. After this evening her maid will prepare our food until we find a cook and servant. We will purchase a Pawnee or blackamoor slave or two from Kébec.” He walked westward into the forest.

Six woodcock had been hanging for days and had reached the hallucinogenic point of decay that Monsieur Trépagny savored. Mari roasted the birds, put them in a large basket, added a cold leg of venison, four portions of steamed sturgeon. René thought it was a supper the
seigneur
hardly deserved. Chama, who had become attentive to the Spanish maid, carried all of this in the oxcart, the cow tied behind. For their own supper Mari thumped on the table a platter of hot eels graced with the sour-grass sauce. She had baked in the morning and served a loaf of bread with the last of the butter—alas for the loss of the cow.

Mari, walking from fire to table in her deerskin tunic, looked as she had always looked, but she gave René the fattest eel and touched his hand lightly. After the boys went out to the
wikuom
she made up a pallet in front of the fireplace and then pulled off her baggy dress. She stood nude in the firelight—the first naked female he had ever seen—not an old Indian castoff foisted on him, but a strong and well-built woman. She lay on the pallet and waited.

René pulled off his clothes, conscious of his greasy reek. He lay down beside Mari, who rolled toward him. The fabulous shock of warm silky skin against him was powerful in the extreme. Not since he and Achille had intertwined and whispered and tried what they could think to try had he experienced the stunning excitement of another human body naked against his. Mari's elasticity, her hard muscles, her smell of bread, river eels and bitter plants made him wild. She was not Achille, but he thought of his brother as he proceeded.