by John Farrow
Until the world abruptly changed.
Out of the mists on a chilly morning, while the campfires of Quebec quietly exhaled gentle smoke, a shipload of bold men from England, on their own initiative and in the service of no nation—pirates—sailed into the port and disembarked in a fury. They demanded the surrender of the hamlet. Brulé was not present, for he had gone north to carouse with the wild men of Tadoussac, as was his wont, and neither was Champlain, who was down at Montreal trading with the Indians, his usual habit. Not in the practice of defending themselves, the inhabitants saw no option other than to surrender, so Quebec fell to the group led by the notorious Kirke brothers. The brothers themselves moved into Champlain’s home and confiscated the remarkably valuable dagger they found there, a treasure unexpected in this frontier, embedded as it was with diamonds and gold.
Hearing the news, Champlain sailed from Montreal to Quebec, fearing that all was lost, but secretly hoping that Brulé and the Huron could mount an attack and chase the pirates off. When he arrived and walked the muddy track up to his home, he opened the door to find Thomas Kirke with his feet up on his dinner table. “This is my home!” the Frenchman insisted.
“Once. Not now. Everything belongs to me. Thanks for taking good care of it before I got here. Now, shove off back to France and take your pissed-over peasants with you. I’ve had enough of them.”
Champlain’s dream had reached its end. He fumed, he raged, but the counsel that he received from friends reiterated the same point of view. All he might do for the good of New France was to return to Paris and beseech the king to send an army. Otherwise, the Kirke brothers now ruled.
Champlain sailed north, first to Tadoussac to pick up Brulé.
“We must return to France, to speak to the king.”
“France?” Brulé responded. “King?”
“Yes! France. The king. Quebec has fallen to the pirates!”
The younger man pulled at his beard and threw the blade of his knife into the soil between his feet. He picked it up and tossed it into the ground again.
“Étienne,” Champlain implored him, dismayed by the man’s reluctance. “We must return to France. Most families from Quebec are with me. The others we’ll collect on a second voyage if we don’t return with an army. We’re going home.”
“Home?” Brulé inquired.
“Yes! Home. To France.”
The woodsman pulled at his beard again. Around him were the trappers and traders who travelled the rivers and lived most of their lives in the forests among the Indians, or alone among the animals.
“In France, who will the king blame for this defeat?”
“I have my responsibilities here—”
“And I have mine. Who will be blamed?”
Champlain did not respond.
“I will not hang in France, Samuel. I will live out my days here. This is my country now. This is my world. Not France.”
Champlain stared at his old friend, who returned the gaze without relenting. “You betray me.”
“The king will say that, too. Why should I owe the king the satisfaction of hanging me for not defending Quebec? I don’t know the king. I’m staying here.”
As though equal in consequence to the fall of Quebec to the brothers Kirke, Brulé’s betrayal tormented him on the anguishing voyage home. He was met in Paris by his long-suffering wife, who cheerfully showed him the country home she would now appreciate that he provide for them. In due course, he had an audience with the king. Champlain did not blame Brulé for the state of affairs, but the king himself asked about “our French woodsmen? Where were they when these English pirates sailed into our French harbour?”
“Absent,” Champlain admitted. “As was I.” He wanted to explain that the distances were great in the New World, that neighbours lived days, and often weeks, apart. He held his tongue, not knowing whether his own neck would be stretched as a result of this circumstance. In the end, he did survive to settle with Hélène, who was not so young now in 1629, for in the end the king just didn’t care so much that New France had been lost.
“One less problem,” the king had determined. “At least I’ll save money.”
Three years after that conversation, Champlain was planting his back garden when Réal de Montfort, an old friend who had been with him for five years in New France as a fur trader, rode a horse up to his country estate. “What news?” Champlain asked, for clearly the man was agitated.
“The dagger! Cartier’s! The king’s dowry!” Montfort cried, then slipped down from his nag.
“Make sense, monsieur. What are you saying?”
Montfort caught his breath, and did his best to calm himself. “The Kirke Brothers—!”
“Are they dead? Tell me they are dead! The Huron have their scalps!”
“No.” “No?”
“No! The brothers, they gave the Cartier Dagger to Charles I of England. I have only learned of this now, but they did it, apparently, years ago, to curry the king’s favour, to ask for his protection in case you returned with soldiers.”
“I heard that rumour. It’s of no consequence. I’d rather have it in a king’s hands then in the grip of those pirates.”
“Well, it’s in a king’s hands now! The king of France!”
“What? How can this be?”
“The dowry, Sam! The dowry!”
Champlain was infuriated with the slow pace of information. He dropped his gardening spade to the earth and threatened to extract shears lying on a cart. “Explain yourself, man, or I’ll demonstrate how Iroquois take scalps!”
Montfort took a deep breath. “Charles I still owes half his wife’s dowry to our king. To pay the dowry, he returned the Cartier Dagger.”
“This is good news,” Champlain conceded. He would travel no more across the seas, but this exchange of gifts among royalty seemed to turn a page on his life.
“It was not the only payment made.”
“What else?”
“Charles I—”
“Yes.”
“—king of England—”
“Montfort, I know who he is! Go on!”
“Has bequeathed all of New France—Canada—”
“Yes?”
“—back to France. Canada belongs to France once more.”
Champlain reeled. This was a joy he had not expected in his impending old age. His friend caught him, and helped him sit upon the edge of the cart, to catch his balance. All his days in the New World seemed to run through his mind, the smell of the woods and the drift of the clouds upon mountainsides, the surge of the spring run-off on the rivers, a light fall of snow, the snapping cold in the dark of winter. He remembered so well the men and women there, native and French alike, and he knew the names of every man and woman who had remained behind, the scant few, most of them still waiting to be evacuated, yet they had been abandoned by their king. He remembered Étienne Brulé also, who would be hearing this news in a few months’ time, who would stand on the rock overlooking Quebec as the Kirke brothers departed with their last cache of furs, to sail away, back to England. He imagined that sight. Brulé had betrayed him, but he was glad now that Brulé was there to see that sight, to be his eyes.
Not for the first time, a wedding between royal families had altered the course of history. While one king did not comprehend what he had given away, and the other did not value what he had received, Samuel de Champlain, having never been an especially devout man, grasped that the hand of God had intervened on behalf of the French, on behalf of those who would struggle for the viability of the New World.
He made two fists, and pounded his chest, fiercely, three times, as if to beat the breath out of himself. “Yes,” he said quietly, intently, and he looked to the heavens, although his eyes were tightly closed. “Yes. Thank God.”
CHAPTER 7
1955
WITH A HEAD FULL OF DETAILS AND WORRIES, CAPTAIN Armand Touton assumed he would automatically wake up early. He set no alarm. His body possessed an
alternative plan, and so, on the morning after the riot, he slept in late, unable to rouse himself until five minutes before noon.
He took out his upset on his wife. When she had finally had enough of his sleepy grumpiness, she slapped down a breakfast plate of fried eggs and beans in front of him on the kitchen table and warned, “Oaf. Be quiet. Do I look like a mind reader? Why would I wake you up early if you don’t ask me?”
Touton settled into his food, then kicked the dog out of the house for panting.
“What’s the matter with you? We’re not the ones rioting! But keep it up, Armand. Soon, we might be.”
Grunting token concurrence, he swept up the runny yolk of his eggs onto a slice of whole-wheat bread, then piled beans onto that. The food revived him, and Marie-Céleste returned to the table with her coffee. She was a handsome woman, with green eyes and wavy black hair that crossed her forehead and fell almost to her shoulders in curls. Although slight, she had shoulders that were broad for her size and a strong, upright posture he’d admired from the moment of their first encounter.
“Sorry,” he demurred. “A coroner was killed last night. Gunned down. I’ve mentioned Roger Clément to you? I have? Also dead.”
“So it’s not only the riot,” she noted sadly.
“You see? I haven’t mentioned the Richard riot yet! Already I forgot! For all I know, downtown Montreal has burnt to the ground!”
“The Rocket was on the radio,” she told him. “He made an appeal.”
“What did he say?”
She sipped her noon tea while waiting for her soup to warm. “He asked people to stop rioting, what else? He wants people to be nice.”
The Rocket on the radio was the best possible strategy, but Touton was impressed that someone had seen to it. For an official to have taken the initiative proved that the situation was dire.
“Probably Drapeau put him up to it. How did he sound?”
“Shaken.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Aren’t we all? I’m sure he didn’t sleep last night. His words will have an effect. People will listen.”
Sipping coffee, the detective considered this development. “I’ll have to go in.”
“This is why I let you sleep. I’ve ironed a clean shirt. So you see, the rumour is not true.”
Confused, Touton asked, “What rumour?”
“The one that says I’m the worst wife east of St. Laurent.”
Touton smiled, rose and took her into his arms. They kissed. They had been married only two years, and both were delighted with their union, despite the policeman’s all-night hours and a frustrating failure to procreate.
Outside, the puppy was yapping.
“May Toot please come back inside? He has no clue what he’s done wrong.”
As he dressed, the poodle jumped around Touton’s heels and bit into his discarded slippers, trying to convince him that playtime had arrived. The detective laughed at him and fell into an all-out tug-of-war, fighting to get his slipper back. He growled as loudly, but only half as happily, as the dog.
His office set up the meeting, and Touton went straight downtown, to the Sherbrooke Street apartment of Clarence Campbell.
On the way, he surveyed damage from the night before and tried to assess the mood of those herding together. Windows were boarded up, some because they’d been smashed and the premises looted, others because the proprietors feared that their businesses might be next. Banks were patrolled by armed guards. At most busy intersections, policemen put on a show of force. Quite a number of cops had been out all night and had not gone home yet, which was also true of roving bands of youths and men. The rioting had stopped, a combination of weariness, dawn and the Rocket’s radio directive. A number of rowdies still hung around in case something started up again.
They wanted to be in on the action.
The situation remained volatile, citizens were tense, and Touton suspected that this might be the most hopeful scenario over the next few days. The worst case would involve men looking for trouble who would discover a flashpoint, and the city would descend into violence once more. A second eruption, he was convinced, could do more damage.
A stretch of Sherbrooke had been part of Montreal’s famed Golden Square Mile, an area of magnificent homes and buildings, each graced with an aristocratic air. The push of a burgeoning downtown, the advent of income tax and the inability of successive generations to continue living at that heightened level of prosperity had caused the properties, one by one, to be bulldozed for office towers or hotels, or else remodelled for shops at street level with tenants above. The president of the National Hockey League lived in a fine Old World apartment building with darkened hallways, staunch doors and high ceilings. The stone frame had been constructed so thickly that visitors wondered if the dominance of the automobile had not been anticipated, for the walls silenced traffic’s thrum while successfully muting sirens. The elevator’s whir accompanied him up to the seventh floor, and after a sojourn down a long corridor he located the Campbell residence, to be admitted by a maid.
For a man living virtually under siege, Clarence Campbell was found to be in good spirits. He greeted the policeman warmly and coaxed him into accepting a coffee, which his helper discreetly disappeared to prepare. The Queen Anne wing chairs into which they settled were not particularly comfortable, at least not for Captain Touton. Perhaps, he thought, Campbell’s short, round body suited them better. He seemed to have odd tastes for a bachelor, including a maid with long black hairs growing from her pasty, pointy chin, and the policeman suspected that somewhere a woman of influence lurked, a curmudgeonly aunt or dour sister.
“It’s a disgrace,” Mr. Campbell decreed. “If people want to direct a grievance at me, they don’t need to wreck the city.”
“Perhaps if they were able to find you, sir—”
“I was at the Forum,” the former war prosecutor pointed out. “I caught a tomato in the eye. The papers didn’t report that one. It bounced off without bursting. Another one caught me on the shoulder. I suppose it’s civilized to throw tomatoes.”
“Rather than rocks, say?”
“Exactly. Or Molotov cocktails. But I suppose those came later.”
“A lot of fires,” Touton concurred. “They’re worrisome.”
“A city in flames.” Mr. Campbell folded his hands in his lap. “I’d call that worrisome. Ah! Your coffee, my tea. As long as we have tea, we have civilization, Captain. Tell me, did you have tea in your POW camp?”
Touton shook his head. “Brit pilots did. They had privileges. These days, I prefer my wake-up coffee.”
“No wonder. You’re captain of the Night Patrol—it must be a narcotic. Cream and sugar?”
“Black, thanks.”
“Ah.”
Touton sipped, found the coffee to his liking but very hot, and put the cup and saucer down on the credenza next to him. He would have preferred a mug. Suddenly, he was aware of the quiet moment passing between them. Observing Campbell, he realized that he was a shy individual.
Touton began by taking a moderately deep breath. “I bring unpleasant news.”
“More unpleasant news?” Mr. Campbell asked, flashing a grim smile. Having stirred his tea, he moved the cup from his lips to the saucer captive on his lap. “How much can a man take, Captain?”
“The Jacques Cartier Dagger, sir, has been stolen again.”
The executive, who had received his guest into his home as though they had been at the office, was wearing a jacket and tie. He placed the teacup and saucer on the side table to his left and removed a handkerchief from his right jacket pocket. He glanced at Armand Touton, then seemed to cast his reflections upon the carpet. He dabbed his mouth with the handkerchief, carefully creased the folds again and returned it to his pocket. “I see,” he said quietly.
“It’s an unfortunate situation.”
“Would it be correct to say that the dagger had been entrusted to your care, Captain Touton? I recall arguing fo
r its return and being rebuffed.”
The officer nodded. He rubbed his hands slowly. “You wouldn’t be out of line to mention it. I considered the knife to be in my care.”
“Any other officer, you understand, and my suspicions would quickly rest on police corruption. Tell me what happened, Captain.”
The policeman took another deep breath and exhaled. “Sir, two men have been killed. Perhaps you heard about it on the news. Driving over here, I was listening to the radio myself. All the talk is about the riot, and the Rocket’s statement. But a pair of deaths in Dominion Square—”
“I heard. A coroner, wasn’t it? That’s awful.”
“He had possession of your knife, sir. The men who killed him stole it.”
Mr. Campbell’s head remained still, his expression blank, but his eyes moved back and forth repeatedly. Then he blinked. What he said next caught his guest off guard. “I’d rather that you not refer to it as my knife, Captain. I only had it on loan.”
“I understand, sir.”
“So this is a deeper tragedy, then, and not of your doing. I see. Villainy, not police negligence.” He tugged his trouser legs up ever so slightly.
“That would be my personal view, sir. Obviously, we had no clue that a second murder would take place. About the first death, I should tell you, the Cartier Dagger was the murder weapon.”
Mr. Campbell flexed backwards at the news, and this time he was the one to exhale. “Unbelievable,” he murmured, and shook his head. Early in his life, his hair had thinned, so that he looked older than a man set to turn fifty in a few months. “Captain, I have something I need to ask.”