The Island of Doves (8 page)

“I’m sorry,” Magdelaine said. “You know I am sentimental about the cabin.”

Magdelaine and her sisters were raised there near the island’s fort. The cabin was a tidy, tranquil place, with creaky floors swept clean each morning by their mother’s broom. It was attached to her father’s trading post, where men like Henri Fonteneau exchanged pelts for the goods they would ferry south in the fall to the mouth of the Grand River: ax blades and knives, flour and coffee and brass kettles. Magdelaine and her sisters were half-breeds—
metis
, the island missionaries and other whites called them when in a polite mood, and indeed they were
mixed
. The sisters were devout Catholic girls who nonetheless knew how to sew the birch-bark outwales of a canoe and gum the seams with pine pitch.

Their mother’s Odawa people had no choice but to tolerate the government’s tireless efforts to reform their heathen ways, but Magdelaine often felt that being a half-breed was an even more difficult path than being a full Odawa. At least her mother’s people had each other, their traditions, their history. And of course her father’s people had everything they wanted, and what they didn’t have, they took. But Magdelaine was at once
both
French and Odawa, and
neither
. She never had the luxury of feeling like a part of anything, and so she made her own way in the world from a very young age. Her father had died when Magdelaine was fourteen, her mother just before she came of age. Then her husband had been killed. And of course, there was the matter of her sisters.

Jean-Henri touched her hand again. “I know how you feel about the trading cabin. That’s why I left it alone and built the new house on an empty plot. You can have both—the old and the new. Don’t you see? There’s no reason to deny yourself these comforts. You aren’t betraying the past.”

Magdelaine gave her son a pointed look. Everyone on the island thought they understood her so well, even him. But there was so much they didn’t know. Magdelaine sighed. She examined her fingers, chastened. Jean-Henri had gotten carried away, without a doubt, in making this house that was so much more than she could ever need. He loved working with his hands, building things, much as Magdelaine wished he would do something that could earn him a little more power and respect in the world.

But Father Adler’s involvement changed things. If he wanted her to live in the house, she would do it, and the next time he asked her to ensure the safety of a woman who needed their help, she would take that new Miss Dove inside and bar the door against the world, hold it with her own shoulder. It was unusual for a man to take notice of the suffering of women, and more unusual still for a priest. But Magdelaine had learned that people had their reasons for the things they did, even if they kept those reasons to themselves. She had written to him for guidance about what to do about Jean-Henri, about how to instruct her students, and other matters of concern on the island. Always, he wrote back with wise words urging patience, prayer. Father Adler was the only truly holy man she had ever known, and she was determined not to let him down.

“Well, come on,” Magdelaine said, standing up and starting toward the canoes. “It’s getting late.”

“So you’ll look at the house?” Jean-Henri grinned and hurried to her side.

“I’ll live in it.” She pushed off into the waves and began the paddle home, and Jean-Henri quickly followed. The rain fell steadily now, and they raised their voices to be heard.

“Oh, I’m so glad, Mother.”

She had relented, but she wanted her son to know it would be on her terms. If she could direct a trading expedition through dense forest, through sickness and nimbly around packs of wolves and into hostile Indian settlements without losing a man to the hatchet, she would direct the goings-on in this preposterous new house. “I will accept it on two conditions.”

“Anything,” Jean-Henri said.

“I want you to write to Bishop Rese and tell him that we will pay for improvements to the church, with a rectory and money for a permanent priest. That Father Milani comes and goes as he pleases and neglects his duties. Some say he seduces women—and he is a drunk. It’s a disgrace to the faithful here. Perhaps the bishop will consider assigning Father Adler instead and we’ll get him to come to the island at last.”

Jean-Henri nodded. “Of course.”

Magdelaine switched the paddle from left to right. “There are a lot of girls here who need schooling, and we can’t leave it all to the Presbyterians. They think if they dunk these children’s heads under the water and say a prayer, the work is done.”

He smiled. “I’m sorry I called you infuriating.”

“No need for apologies,” she said, grinning at her son. “I took it as a compliment.”

“You said there were two conditions. What else?”

“I want you to go back to the city and get yourself established. I have been corresponding with a former agent of Matthew Bell’s in Trois-Rivieres, Mr. Greive. He may have a position for you in Montreal and I want you to take it. A man
must
make his way in the world.”

Jean-Henri looked uneasy. “I think we both know I am not cut out for business. My place is here, on the island. I have plenty of work to keep me busy.” Magdelaine had to admit that that was true. Jean-Henri had repaired wagons and sleighs and boats, helped build the new houses that seemed to spring up like weeds. He earned enough on his own. He never asked for anything from her. But it wasn’t about the money. It was about pride.

“You are your father’s son. His blood runs in your veins. If you try, really try, you
will
succeed. You are not meant to be a common laborer.”

Jean-Henri sighed but said nothing. Their canoes touched bottom for the last time that day and they hooked the crossbeams over their elbows and dragged them up the beach. Ani trotted down to them to make sure Magdelaine didn’t forget to pluck out the net full of fish. Then he circled and followed at their heels as they climbed the beach to the house. It was dark now and the windows in the first floor of the house glowed orange, illuminating a sitting room with fine furniture, shelves lined with books, a carved banister on the staircase that led to the rooms upstairs. Magdelaine looked at her son and shook her head in disbelief, yet again. The steps leading to the entryway felt firm beneath her feet, and as they climbed toward the door, it swung open.

An island woman stood in the doorway. Magdelaine recognized her as the daughter of one of Henri’s men, Ansel Leroux.

“Mother, you remember Esmee, don’t you?” her son said by way of introduction.

“Good evening, madame,” Esmee said. She wore a pale yellow apron over a broadcloth skirt striped with intricate ribbon work. Her sleek black hair was divided in two loose braids. She held her back very straight.

Magdelaine took the girl’s slender palm between her own rough hands. “Yes, of course.”

“Esmee is going to keep house for you here.”

“Oh, I don’t think—”

Esmee looked at Jean-Henri, worry briefly crossing her brow. He held up his hand. “After all these years skinning whitefish on the flat side of a rock, you think you know how to take care of a house like this? Besides, this way you can come and go as you please. Otherwise, all of this will just become a burden.”

Magdelaine nodded. Her son deserved perhaps a little credit for his foresight. “I see. Well. Welcome, Esmee.”

Esmee relaxed. She glanced once more at Jean-Henri, and he nodded to assure her that her position was secure. When he looked away, her eyes lingered on his face a moment before she turned back to Magdelaine. “Are you hungry? You must be. I have a stew warming.” She took the fish from Magdelaine, then Jean-Henri’s hat and coat and hung them on hooks next to the door. “But I thought first, madame, you might like to bathe. It is so chilly out, and you have been traveling a long time. I’ve heated the water.”

Magdelaine fought to keep eagerness out of her voice. There was nothing on earth she wanted more at that moment than a scalding hot bath in a warm room. She made a show of glancing at her dirt-caked fingernails, then touched the front of her greasy hair. “I suppose I could use a good scrubbing.”

Esmee nodded and left the front hall to prepare the bath in the kitchen. Magdelaine glanced into the sitting room, where a large fire glowed between a sofa and chairs that sat on a thick carpet. Next to the window was another chair and a large brass cage shaped like a bell. It hung on a hook from a stand that curved to the floor. Inside, a white bird with a rose-colored head hopped from perch to perch.

“A bird?” Magdelaine said. “For a pet?”

Jean-Henri smiled. “A dove. A good-luck charm for the next Miss Dove.”

Magdelaine watched as the dove marched in place on the perch, opened its wings and closed them again. “Who would put a dove in a cage?”

“Cities full of very wealthy women. It’s the fashion now to keep a dove in the parlor—a mated pair if you can. I thought it would be difficult to catch one and coax it into the cage, but this little creature submitted quite easily. Maybe it wanted some company.”

“Well, I don’t like it at all—it’s terrible.”

Jean-Henri sighed. “Then give it away.”

He climbed the stairs, disappearing into the mysterious house’s seemingly endless rooms. Magdelaine heard the girl’s careful steps in the kitchen, then entered the room and watched as she heaved two buckets of steaming water off their hooks on the crane that stretched over the fire. The water made a satisfying sound as it filled the tin tub. Beside the tub was a chair and on the floor next to it a folded fur-lined blanket and a clean linen shift.

“Madame, this letter came for you yesterday,” Esmee said, handing it to her.

Without showing her surprise, Magdelaine broke the seal and recognized Father Adler’s steady hand. He had written to tell her that he had found another young woman in need of help and had begun to make the arrangements for her journey. Magdelaine felt the weight of renewed worry in her chest. So she would have one more chance to try to set things right, one more Miss Dove to try to save.

“Well,” Esmee said, turning toward the door. “I’ll leave you to your bath. Just call for me if you need anything.”

She nodded. When Esmee went out, Magdelaine ladled some stew into a bowl and set it outside the kitchen door for Ani. Then she slipped off her moccasins and untied the back of her broadcloth skirt, stiff with mud. She pulled off her leggings. A wide dark band marked her ankles, the especially soiled patch of skin between where the leggings stopped and the moccasins began. Once the water had cooled slightly, she stepped into the tub and lowered herself slowly down onto her backside. She felt her cheeks pinken in the warm room as she slipped the bindings off the ends of her braids and loosened her hair with her fingers. It was streaked with strands of wiry gray. She leaned back and dipped her head into the water. Steam ascended from the tub, masking the window that looked out over what, she saw now, could be a garden.

And now another woman in need of salvation, a woman named Susannah Dove, was traveling west at this moment. It was all Magdelaine could do not to dress and return to the harbor to wait for her. This time, she could not let anything go wrong. Father Adler had not disclosed the city where the woman lived, nor the route she would travel, and this of course was wise. The second Miss Dove’s husband had intercepted a letter from Magdelaine and uncovered his wife’s plan to leave. Father Adler later wrote to explain that the woman would not be coming to the island after all, that her husband had waited until she tried to board the boat, to see whether she would really try to go through with it, before he dragged her back home. There was nothing more they could do for her.

A heavy rain fell. The sound of it on the windowpane was like the sound of two strands of beads rubbing together, swinging around a woman’s neck as she runs.

I
t took Susannah’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dark space of the steerage deck. The smell of the place hit her first: goats and pigs shifted in narrow pens, agitating their soiled hay. Acrid tallow candles burned in the glass globes that lined that wall. Susannah glanced at the faint orange flames that danced within each fixture, then back at the narrow staircase that held the only path to the open air. Everything within sight was made of wood. One candle tipping over could ignite the entire steamboat.

She located an empty berth, little more than a plank of wood, and sat down. Additional berths stacked above hers, three high to the ceiling. Already the top tier was occupied with reclining passengers, and she could see why the bottom was the least desirable place to be. Tobacco juice and apple cores rained down at regular intervals. The vessel shuddered with the building pressure in the boilers, and soon she could hear the enormous paddle wheel that propelled the steamboat start to churn. They were easing away from the dock. Up on the hurricane deck, which was open to the air, she could hear the first-class passengers, who sat on benches and stood waving at the gunwale. Their cries of “Good-bye!” rang out. A few steerage passengers climbed back up the stairs to join the chorus of farewells and wave at the people on the dock. But most stayed put. No one was there to wish them good-bye. Everything and everyone they had was with them here in the bowels of the steamboat.

In the opposite corner, a heavily pregnant woman sat on the lid of a trunk with a rosary draped over her hand. The nun had told Susannah to find Father Milani, and she thought she might as well start looking for him now. Susannah stepped toward the woman. “Good morning,” she said. “Would you happen to know where I could find the priest?”

“Which one? There’s a Father McCorkle on the boat. He was with us on the canal boat from Albany. I saw a few more get on today.”

“Was one of them named Father Milani?”

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Susannah nodded. The woman’s shoulders were slumped forward, the weight of her belly pulling everything off center. “Would you like to lie down? I’d be happy to trade places with you for a while.”

The woman looked suspiciously at Susannah. Everyone here seemed poised to thwart thieves and swindlers, as if they had seen them too many times. “No, thank you. My husband is waiting for me in Detroit. He made me promise I would sit on my trunk until I got there, and that’s what I’m going to do.” Susannah nodded again at the woman, wondering if she understood that it would be more than a week before they saw Detroit.

Susannah asked a few other people sitting nearby about the priest, but all answered, some in broken English, that they had never heard his name. She thought about going to the upper deck to ask around, but it seemed dangerous to show her face just yet. Anyone from Buffalo might be on the boat, and anyone who knew Susannah Fraser would be traveling first class. And after all, shouldn’t this Father Milani be looking for her too? It seemed
he
should be the one to know where to find his charge.

All afternoon, the people around her kept to themselves. Each family was a compact little unit—German here, Irish there, Norwegians and Swedes. Their children looked like little blond ghosts. They moved quietly, whispered to each other, and disappeared out of sight. The day passed slowly.

At dusk a deckhand rang a bell to signal that the men had to leave and go to their separate quarters for sleeping. Even families couldn’t stay together after dark, and a worried look crossed the wives’ faces as they contemplated spending the night alone in a room full of strangers. Once the men left, the women busied themselves with caring for the children. One kind traveler offered a blanket to Susannah, and she took it gratefully. Susannah lay down in her berth and as she turned from side to side, trying to get comfortable on the hard board, she heard a pair of girls giggle. She turned and saw them playing cat’s cradle with a dirty piece of string. Susannah smiled at them with her cheek propped on her elbow. They stared back, and the girl who held the string stuffed it into her shoe.

Around midnight, Susannah began to regret that she hadn’t saved some of Mrs. Tully’s fried bread. The women had brought their own food for their husbands and children—cured meats and bread wrapped in cloth—and they didn’t offer any of it to Susannah. The first-class passengers up on the enclosed main deck would have dined in the stateroom, with servants to pour their wine, and by now they would be settled in their private cabins until morning. Susannah turned once more onto her left side, feeling the hard shape of the necklace cut into her leg. Somehow despite her discomfort, her aching bones, sleep finally came.

She woke with a start some hours later, just before dawn, and slipped quietly up two flights of stairs, past the main deck to the hurricane deck, which was faintly lit with small lamps. The cold wind off the lake shocked her cheeks, and she rubbed them with her palms. The paddle wheels tirelessly churned the water, and the entire boat shuddered with the pressure of the boiler. Wood smoke poured from the stacks and disappeared against the black sky.

Standing at the gunwale, she looked at the moon hanging low in the sky, smooth and silvery. But it looked desolate too against the barren water that stretched over the horizon ahead of the boat. Once again Susannah felt a pang for the plants in her greenhouse. All her work cast aside, and for what? Where would she be in a month, in a year? She thought about ivy, how the path of its growth depended on what stood nearby. Next to a fence, it could grow tall. In the absence of structure, it would spread across the ground.

Just then, Susannah heard a man approaching, singing softly under his breath, and her fingers tightened on the rail. Her nerves were like a bell rung too many times, its toll off-key. She could no longer remember what to be frightened of, where a threat might reside. With familiars? With strangers? Danger seemed to lurk everywhere.

The man leaned his elbows on the rail a safe distance from Susannah and she exhaled. He wore a heavy coat with a wide collar made of fine wool. His beaver hat hung down over his eyes, and Susannah saw only the tip of his nose and his lips moving with the words he sang.

’Tis seven years,

I’ve been a rover.

Away, you rolling river . . .

His pipe interrupted his song as he took intermittent puffs. When it was spent, he tapped the ashes into the water and put it in his pocket.

Just then he turned to her. They were the only ones on the hurricane deck. The rest of the boat, it seemed, was still asleep.

“Good morning,” he called out. He tipped his hat and it moved a little farther back on his head.

Susannah nodded her head in his direction, without quite looking at him. “Morning, sir.”

He stepped closer so that he could hear her over the wind. “You must be very cold. This night air is relentless.”

Sister Mary Genevieve’s woolen dress was doing little to keep out the wind, and Susannah thought of the fine furs and capes hanging useless in her wardrobe back in Buffalo. She remembered the nun’s instruction not to speak to anyone, but she wondered if rudely turning away might only draw more attention to herself. “It isn’t so very bad,” she said. “I was finding it difficult to stay in my berth. Couldn’t sleep, and the air down there is . . .” She tried to think of a polite way to describe the smell of the animals, the unwashed people packed together in the dank steerage deck.

“Malodorous?” the man offered.

Susannah laughed. “Yes, sir.”

“I can assure you that the men’s quarters are even worse.”

“Tell me, how many goats do you have there?”

“Several. And one very offensive snorting donkey.” The man extended his hand. “Alfred Corliss.” By imperceptible degrees, the sky behind them was lightening.

Susannah slipped her left hand behind her back and briefly pressed her right hand into his. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Corliss.” She looked out over the water and hoped that he would not ask for her name. As the sun crept nearer to the eastern horizon behind them, Susannah could see that land wasn’t completely out of sight. Off to the north, a jagged strip of blackness formed the lakeshore, miles and miles of forest, birds, bears, wolves, Indians. Places untouched by white hands. To the south, the lake seemed limitless. She had never sailed across the ocean, but she couldn’t think of how any body of water could seem larger than this one, spilling off the edge of the earth into nothing.

Alfred pulled his collar up closer to his ears. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance. Where are you traveling?”

She took a fortifying breath and remembered the story Sister Mary Genevieve had given her. “St. Louis,” she said. And then to prevent him from asking whether she was traveling with a husband, she added, “With Father Milani.” A man she had yet to meet, of course, but Susannah knew well enough not to share that fact with Alfred.

He nodded. “I myself am bound for the Wisconsin Territory.”

Susannah looked at him in surprise. “That is such a wilderness. Is your family there?”

“No, I have only one brother left, but he is back in Boston.”

“Oh,” she said. “I see.” For the first time she allowed her gaze to linger on his face. His brown hair was overgrown, and a thick lock of it persisted in falling across his eyes, though he pushed it back up under his hat again and again with his slender fingers. Beneath the hair was a pair of dark brown eyes. To be nearly alone in the world was very sad indeed, Susannah thought. But she realized all at once that she could say the same for herself.

Alfred waved away her sympathy. “Not so sad. I am free to take on the work that others who are bound by obligations cannot. I will be a teacher in the Indian country, at a small mission school.”

A religious man, Presbyterian perhaps. And she had mentioned traveling with a priest. She realized that he, like Edward, like so many men of her class, might hold disdain for a woman he assumed was a Catholic. “And what will you teach them?”

“Well, I’ve been hired to imbue them with the Gospels, of course, but to be honest I am far more curious about what I might learn from them, about the native understanding of creation.” He gave her an apologetic glance, as if this notion might upset her. “I don’t mean that I will neglect opportunities for conversion, but . . .”

“You must come to understand what they know, what they believe, before you can hope to introduce them to a new way of life.”

Alfred nodded gratefully. “Precisely—that’s just the way I see it. If I have learned anything in my travels, it is that there are many ways to see the world. Take, for example, a common bird we see around us each day—a finch, perhaps. Now, how many times have we watched this bird take flight across a field, or from one rooftop to the next, without understanding just
how
the creature is able to do so?”

“Many times, of course,” Susannah said, “for I have watched birds all my life and could not explain to you how they are able to work this miracle.”

Alfred held up a finger. “Ah, but it is not a miracle at all. A bird’s flight is, simply, a proof. The laws of mechanics exist, with or without our notice.” He reached inside his coat and pulled out a small bound book and pencil. Dawn rose around them. In the east, fire seemed to be rising out of the lake. The light brought everything into relief: Mr. Corliss’s expensive coat was frayed at the cuffs. His wild boyish hair was flecked with gray. He opened the book and flipped past several drawings—the
Thomas Jefferson
, seen from the dock; two gulls diving into the waves—to a blank page.

“Many a priest and minister on this boat would argue that God made the bird fly,” Susannah found herself saying.

“Indeed.” Alfred’s eyebrows climbed with excitement. “To them I would say that God made the bird, and God also made the man and imbued him with the curiosity and fortitude needed to seek out this knowledge. Here—I’ll show you.” With one hand pressing the binding at the top, he held the book flat and sketched the wing of a bird quickly with his right hand. “A bird flies because of the force of lift combined with the force of thrust. That is, because a bird is heavier than the air around it, it must use the force of lift to overcome its weight. When the wing is spread, it curves in such a way that the pressure is greater beneath the wing than above it as it moves through the air.” He drew arrows pointing up beneath the feathers. “That is lift. Once a bird has attained lift, it must use the force of thrust—created by the flapping of its wings—to propel itself forward. And
that
is how the finch moves from branch to branch.”

Susannah nodded. No one had ever explained such a complicated thing to her so plainly.

He pressed his lips together, suddenly embarrassed, and put the book and pencil back in his pocket. “But understanding the physical properties that allow for this phenomenon does not diminish the wonder of it, nor God’s hand in making it so.”

“You, sir, will make a fine teacher,” Susannah said.

“I intend to try.” He glanced at her. “May I ask you a question that may seem intrusive?”

Susannah braced herself. “Of course, sir.”

“Is your destination in St. Louis a convent?”

Susannah hesitated, knowing her answer could put her on the receiving end of the kind of scalding condescension for Catholics she had seen Edward dole out many times. Perhaps this man, this Mr. Corliss, might want to engage her in a theological debate about the falsehood of Purgatory, about the nature of the Eucharist. Or, worse, he would ask her a question to which she did not know the answer, and uncover her lie. But what else could she say? How else could she explain why she was on the boat?

“Yes,” she said finally. “It is.”

“May I ask, then—why you wear a bonnet and not a veil?”

Susannah was so relieved by this simple inquiry that she nearly laughed. “A perfectly good question, sir.” She had wondered the same thing about Sister Mary Genevieve, but now that she had taken on the guise of a nun, the answer was clear. “I will answer your question with a question,” she said. “You are a Presbyterian?”