Order of Good Cheer (10 page)

It is this industry, this mind-filling work, that keeps them all from being afraid, leaving no room for it. Lucien can stand apart and regard the hurry in their chopping and rasping and banging and barking and see too clearly that, to a man, fear is their fuel. None utters the word scurve. Sometimes a word is louder, and grows deafening, the longer it is not spoken.

Speaking of biting flies, this morning Lucien heard — and with no reason to believe it is not true — that the Mi'qmah hereabouts are not so gentle as all have been boasting. For it seems they have a famous way of torturing an enemy, one made worse through being enacted under the guise of benevolence. That is, by letting a man go free. Before doing so they relieve him — a captured Iroquois, one assumes — of the burden of all of his clothes and skins and then point the direction of his village many leagues distant and release him into the care of the woods. Apparently in any season but winter, such a man will not survive the blackflies, mosquitoes, horseflies, stag flies, chiggers, and ticks for more than two days, and it is further said that if the man does not find a pond to jump into within an hour he most certainly will be made mad, being capable by then of naught but running into tree trunks and snorting infantile noises out his nose as he tries to flee. And of course in winter the cold bites you whole.

Lucien laughs cruelly. He has far too much head for sleep tonight. Beside him, poor Simon sucks breath like a baby, seeking the health he lost over two days and nights doing battle with the purgatorial mushroom.

No, the Mi'qmah have their own especial world, one the French know only a corner of. Tonight, it had been one of Lucien's nights to join the nobles' table, and he had come late because of some smooth-planing he needed to finish before rain came. The sagamore Membertou was a guest at table, and the nobles looked well into their cups. Remarkably — and Lucien merely listened, and his opinion was not sought in any case — they were considering Membertou's proposal that some Etchemin warriors, from the south, be captured and kept here as slaves and used to grind the grain for their bread! There sat Fougeray de Vitre sombrely nodding, with Monsieur Lescarbot brow-knit,
and Sieur Poutrincourt himself thinking this through. Their bread was famously adored by the savages, and lately some of them had taken turns at the hand mill — a job often used as punishment, so tedious is it — their reward being half the bread that results from the labour. But apparently their love knows earthly limits, because here was the sagamore proposing that the French with their many muskets join them in a raid south, where, seeing the French at their side, the Etchemins will be easily defeated, with slaves for the hand mill taken, and women too, if the French wish them. (Monsieur Champlain's doubtful translation of the sagamore's words left it unclear whether Membertou was boasting humorously that he already had too many women around him.) In any case, the nobles sat, perhaps envisioning all that bread and all those women, until Monsieur Champlain interrupted his own translation — for the sagamore loves to make long speeches —to tell them simply, “The keeping of slaves would not go well for us,” which appeared to embarrass the rest of them, or at least bring them to their better senses. And the lawyer Lescarbot then made a joke, proclaiming slavery to be a hobby more favoured by the English. And then the Sieur bit himself on the inner cheek and shouted. Not a minute passed before he bit himself again where it had swelled, as it sometimes will, and now he both shouted and stood.

Lucien inhales deeply the smells of nocturn. It is his first week in this dwelling, and his first lying indoors in months, if you don't count that loud and malodorous ship. Here the main smell is a most pleasant resin of fir, issuing from bed slats, wall logs, floorboards, and ceiling joists. The newly violated wood smells most. It is the smell of their injury, and they bleed a perfume for the benefit of man's nostrils. For the several weeks this wood continues to bleed, Lucien will smell neither his pillow nor the breath or bodies of his fellows, all of whom are asleep but
him. He decides to enjoy this night and not hurry sleep. Indeed, it might well be the best time he spends here, with the resin at its most benevolent. Nor have many bugs — the spiders, beetles, and small biters — followed them in to take up lodgings in their pillows, beds, and beards. On ship a man was bitten right inside his asshole and he had for days a fair agony of itching, and such were his intense postures to satisfy this itch that all the men laughed, and Benet finally laughed at himself too, and thereafter the unknown creature came to be known as “Benet's bug,” leading to the chorus of one of the colony's first songs: “Commit no sin, lest ye be bitten within, by Benet's bug.”

It is good to be indoors again. The carpenter's curse: everyone's place save his own is attended to. The nobles have been indoors for weeks. Of course, many of their planks were brought from St-Croix, place of pestilence, and though no physical evil abides in the wood, there is something of a malevolent spirit in the grain, looking like the long eyebrows of ill will, though of course this is only in the mind of observance. But better to start fresh, from innocent wood that has heard no moans, no cursing of God's own name. And still smells of sweet pitch.

Lucien realizes, in a moment of greater wakefulness, that for all the dwellings he has constructed, both from the ground up or torn down in part to make anew, he has never before built his own dwelling. Not even his own sleeping room. Of course not — his father and uncles, carpenters all, would at any hint of rot or divorced joinery pounce upon it and see it fixed. Make your own house another's envy, his father once told him, and you will never lack work.

It seems his father was wrong. St-Malo was overfull of enviable houses and notable carpenters, and even the best had often to travel miles to find the next endeavour. Lucien was trained on the rough doors of barns, and fencing for pigs, and Babette's
stuck windows, when she let him. He was not the best but good enough when he put his mind into the wood, and to find employ had had to travel not miles but an entire ocean, to a new world.

Though not entirely against his will. And when, God willing, he returns, he will have the money to begin his own small enterprise, perhaps a village or two inland from St-Malo, and he knows he will not lack for work because, sadly, he will now be famous, and be expected to tell stories of exploration. To do so he will have to change his nature. Though little do the people at home know that, here, boredom soon enough becomes the biggest story, that after doing what work one can with the body, it becomes yet harder work to entertain the mind.

Children's games entertain some. Old leather gets stuffed with feathers for the invented contest of kicking a ball at a distant stump. (Men have demanded that Lucien carve them a proper set of
boules
. He may yet do so if he finds the time, and enough root-burl, which might not split.) And there are impromptu games of the most puerile: spitting, pissing, leaping to touch a nest of bees and daring not run. Always a wager of coins, a fur, rations of brandy. Almost daily there is wrestling, naked save for breeches. (Lately poor Dédé is without challenge; the last man broke a thumb; the one before, a rib; and apparently, though no one saw it, the beast ripped the hair from a poor soul's armpit.) Others have fashioned parlour games — chess in the dirt with ranked pinecones as the soldiers. Others drink and sing, and their songs have become as common as the wind in the trees. Lucien could see the boredom set instantly in Monsieur Champlain, who it seems sets foot on land only to turn forlornly and watch the iron sea. He has already taken the longboat on two excursions, one lasting two weeks and, say the men who went, almost ended their lives on the rocks of a bald and waterless island. Lucien suspects Champlain pretends to
be scouting for locales of value — oak, mines of iron or copper, vines — but he is really just escaping the smell and uniform press of land.

God, what will winter be like?

On his half-pillow, Lucien weighs crude hefts of mood and decides he is still partly glad to be here, over the ocean, smelling resin, more awake than during the daylight. Though he would dearly love to have his own room, if only to escape the snoring. It is a rough irony that a carpenter is not allowed his own room here, though of anyone he could most easily build it.

MEMBERTOU IS IN
the mapmaker's room waiting for him. When Samuel enters, the old sagamore looks up and smiles and offers his hand for shaking — not at all a savage gesture but one mimicking and taking seriously these politics that the French perform without thought. Disturbingly, Membertou's smile brings to mind the lawyer Lescarbot's.

As they shake hands Samuel finds it funny to think that, despite so French a smile, one that Samuel duly answers with his own, they two can more markedly smell each other. He finds himself wishing that, rather than Membertou gaining these French habits, the sagamore should best remain as he would have been before, blank of face and staring proudly. Indeed, Samuel wishes he could answer that stare with a like one of his own. Two men reading each other's eyes, searching for strengths and weaknesses perhaps, but it is also a faster way to find friendship.

Of the savages, Membertou alone has free access through their gate and, once in, he takes it upon himself to go anywhere he pleases. He has been discovered sitting in Sieur Poutrincourt's chair, for instance, and Poutrincourt was on that occasion gracious enough to seat himself on the bench set there for visitors.

“In two months, or in three months, there will be moose,” is the first thing Membertou says, though in a simpler way. Months
are moons, and he uses no future tense that logic can ascertain. He holds his palms up and shoves them at Samuel, who wonders what the gesture might mean. The sagamore's palms are white and look soft, though they likely aren't. His hair, bound at the back, has come forward at the sides to frame his face like a hood.

“Good. We all look forward to that.” Samuel decides it would be harmful to tell Membertou that many of the men, if not most of them, are dismissive of moose. All tried the dried version many weeks ago upon their arrival, and it was tainted.

“The Frenchmen continue to eat beef?”

“Yes. Beef is what we have. Barrels of beef.”

“Moose is better than beef.”

“We French like beef. But indeed we look forward to the moose.”

“A barrel is not a place for meat.”

Samuel knows not to explain salting to Membertou again, for clearly he is feigning ignorance.

Membertou visits today only on the pretence of discussing trade for fresh meat. Samuel knows the man's real reason is to once again ask Samuel to make him a Christian. The old sagamore will wait and wait. Today is Sunday, and Samuel wonders if it could be that Membertou has taken note, has counted days, and is here today because of it.

They sit erect in the room's two chairs, and Samuel flags a boy passing the open door and asks him to go to Bonneville and bring back bread, and tea. Scratching himself, hunching to glance out the square hole cut for a window, Membertou speaks casually of tomorrow's weather, then explains how one might repair a canoe even in deepest winter, by putting fire against a tree and thereby melting out — but don't burn it! — enough precious pitch. Only later, when the Sunday bell rings calling them
in for prayer, does he rise and touch Samuel's shoulder to ask him the important question. Samuel looks at the floor, finding it painful to deny the man, especially when he is about to abandon Membertou for the same Christian service he is requesting. And Samuel finds it ironic that this man in front of him desires this service more than Samuel does himself.

“I am sorry,” Samuel tells him and turns to leave. He knows that sorry is as difficult a word for the Mi'qmah as it was for the savages in Hochelaga. “I will ask the priest again.”

He wishes Membertou would ask the priest himself, but knows he won't. The priest is the one man Membertou is shy of.

“Please.” Now Membertou has him by the arm and is not letting him go.

The savage does understand that Samuel himself is unable, that he is not a priest. Membertou, though, seems to have heard of and clung to the rumour that some Frenchmen are not of the priest's religion, and that some who are not priests but pastors can also welcome a savage into the Christian family. Samuel has no intention of entering this story with the man. Last year, in St-Croix, their settlement was blessed by the presence of both a pastor and a priest, and the two hated each other so much that they twice came to blows and de Monts (himself a Protestant) was of a mind to flog them. Truly, if one said apple, the other said plum. And when the scurve saw them both in bed they still would not forgive, and when they died within a day of each other all saw this as somehow fitting, so much so that both priest and pastor were buried in a single grave, in a forced embrace. And while other reasons were given for this act (frozen ground, too few able men with enough strength to make a second hole, and such), all knew it was to end their fighting, and Samuel sensed that all approved of de Monts's ecumenical spirit.

So for reasons of peace there is only a priest in Port-Royal. Samuel has no idea as to how a savage might be made a Protestant. Nor has he nearly the subtlety of language to explain how one god can have two families.

Samuel has been to Poutrincourt for advice on Membertou's behalf. Twice now he has told Fr. Vermoulu of the sagamore's request, and twice the priest has simply stared at him, a stare too dense with opinion for him to read, but one he suspects is telling a mapmaker to mind his own business. While the King has decreed that Christianity be given to savages far and wide, it seems that the priests charged with this task will decide for themselves the timing of it. Indeed, Samuel thinks the priest a dark scoundrel, one whose selfishness surpasses any other's here, a man of scant nobility who tests the true nobles' patience (Vermoulu would call it piety) by commanding this man and that to tend the priest's private garden and fish pond, taking the men away from their many other needful duties. Using God as his emperor, he tries to be a small king here. Samuel is only glad that Vermoulu is a quiet man who prefers his own company.