by Nancy Young
“No! No! Please … oh please,” Isabelle cried. “Don’t die! Please don’t leave me. No!” The young woman cried inconsolably, her tears flowing down her stricken face upon her limp and dying lover. Peering through red swollen eyes she looked up momentarily to see Madame Lowell crouched like a small animal at the side of her uncle, still moaning softly and muttering incomprehensibly in the housekeeper’s arms.
“Why, Father Jacob? Why?” Isabelle called. “What did he do to you? Why did you do it? No!” For her uncle she felt the welling of the largest hatred a young heart could summon. She felt an overpowering sense of anger, shame, and regret for having brought the innocent young man into this house of insanity. “What have I done?” she wailed, pressing her hand deep into his bleeding wounds desperate to stop the flow of life that seemed to be seeping from him.
Amalie Lowell looked across at her young charge, no longer a girl, as she rocked her dying lover in her quaking arms and wailed like a wraith. She shook the now silent priest until his closed eyelids began to quiver, and then slowly parted. “Why? Why?” she demanded. “Why did you do such a thing, Jacob?”
The priest struggled but could not answer for the thick coagulating blood that was welling up in his throat and choking back his words. But then, the unspoken surfaced and broke through the quagmire of bile that clouded him, and with the few words he had left in his wretched soul, the dying priest uttered a name, and then a second name.
“Adrienne … Tomàs … no friend … traitor … must not … ”
Madame Lowell cradled his head, beseeching him to answer. “Who is he? Who is Tomàs, Father Jacob? Who is he?”
“Tomàs. Adrienne … she is mine … cannot be his. He...he...must die.” His last gasp was a death rattle as the priest fell limp in Amalie’s arms.
•
For many months, like a macabre circus performance enacted over and again on a revolving carousel of a stage, scenes from the ill-fated meeting of Isabelle’s uncle and her beloved played repeatedly in the young woman’s mind. How the two men in her life could clash so brutally in a single irreversible moment was a question with no answer. It was an unexpected blow of the bitterest kind, which spun her into a tumult of confusion and longing. During that time, Isabelle lay in a fetal clutch in the womb of her small dark bedroom. As she lay limp and wordless on her small bed, her regret scraped away at the insides of her soul like the blunt edge of a rusted hunting knife. Hate, love, and anger mixed so thoroughly throughout her wracked body that she could not willfully move, her rhythmic rocking driven by another source.
Meanwhile, in her infinite capacity as housekeeper and caretaker, Madame Lowell took charge in the mounting chaos that swept across Father Jacob’s church like a tidal wave, until even her capacity was breached and she could no longer stem the tide of mishap that decimated both church and township. Stoically she marshaled Isabelle through the crisis without letting on that there was unrest in the parish, hand-feeding her young charge twice a day and each week bathing her. It came as no shock to Madame Lowell finally when the entire parish began to abandon the sinking ship; it was as if Moses himself stood at the top of Mont-Mégantic and declared the church spiritually bankrupt.
The decline in numbers of the faithful had been precipitous in the months before those defining events of winter. The priest remained oblivious; his once impassioned sermons escalated into incomprehensible liturgical ravings which bewildered, then offended his already beleaguered patrons. At first they came to his mass believing they would receive succor from the worry and dread of further decline in the mill-town, but when they received instead the hell-fire and brimstone ranting of a street-corner madman, disbelief and unrest began to reign. Those who returned to the church every week came out of politeness if not loyalty or sheer habit. But they grumbled less than politely as sermons segued into belligerence and misplaced hostility. Names said in the confidence of confession were unabashedly disclosed and individuals whose crimes were imagined in the priest’s fevered mind were personally vilified, their libelous actions decried as direct affronts to him, the Right Hand of God.
The whispered half-veiled criticisms and apologetic notices of complaint threw the fiercely loyal Madame Lowell into a momentary black mood, but she rose above the fray and expertly turned them back upon the accusers, pointing out their lack of faith and spiritual fortitude. Father Jacob’s ultimate act of insanity, however, left the poor woman with no defense. With his death she was forced to write a letter to the Catholic Church headquarters in Québec informing them of events, underplaying the drama and admitting only to a minor loss of parishioners. By the time her letter touched down upon the Archdeacon’s desk, however, the scandal had already reached as far as Rome. Madame Lowell could do nothing but wait until a new priest was sent.
But no reply to her letter arrived. It was nearly summer by the time she was finally approached by the eldest daughter of one of the last remaining families in Solpetrière, a devout but meddling young woman named Cécile, the local shopkeeper’s daughter. She had been a willing volunteer for Madame Lowell at the many after-service church gatherings, but when she stepped boldly into the church one late afternoon that spring, she was full of well-meaning but misguided help. She found Madame Lowell busily cleaning and preparing the church for the next service, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Madame Lowell … ” she began, clearing her throat hesitantly and waiting for the church caretaker to turn about. “Madame Lowell, you know that I will always be God’s servant and your friend, but I must tell you about what everyone in this town — and those who have already gone — are talking about behind your back.” Madame Lowell had turned around, but now she stopped her dusting and looked the young woman in the eye. Cécile continued carefully, avoiding Madame Lowell’s expectant stare. “What Father Jacob did — God rest his soul,” she began, lowering her eyes and crossing herself. She then dropped her voice to a low whisper, “What he has done has brought onto this town the wrath of … the umm … the uhh … the Indians … those Mohawk. I think that’s what they call themselves. We must keep looking behind our backs for a tomahawk in the scalp!”
Madame Lowell’s eyes widened with disbelief. “What are you saying?”
The girl continued, now emboldened. “Madame Lowell, I am most serious. My father says that the construction of a new Church is already under way in St.-Gérard. Before the Indians … have your scalp and ours. You should come with me now.”
“And, what of Isabelle?” Madame Lowell replied, placing her feather duster upon the vestibule where she had been cleaning, her two small round fists coming to rest on the curves of her matronly hips.
“Isabelle? What of her?” The young woman spoke with complete fervor and conviction now. “She must most definitely stay!” She continued. “They will come to claim one of ‘Us’ for the killing of one of ‘Them.’ That’s what they do — you must know. I think SHE should have thought about it all before she started her … her … dalliance with that Indian. She should give herself up to them — for all of our sakes!”
The young woman’s words rang through the rafters of the church like a bat through a belfry, forming a gust of wind that subtly shook the dusty windows loose in their casements like a death rattle. The younger woman looked to the other with a shudder. Cécile spoke earnestly and was taken aback when Madame Lowell picked up her feather duster and briskly escorted her out of the church. She closed the door and locked it securely, and returned to her fervent dusting and cleaning. The more she dusted the angrier she became. How the townsfolk could be so fearful and backward in their regard for the native people was more evidence of their deficiencies in Christian charity and spiritual fortitude. Little did the specious young woman know that the Indians she feared had already come to claim their dead from her doorstep, and from her assessment of them, they were more civil than many of the local parishioners themselves in the
face of destruction.
Walk-Tall’s father had come to claim his youngest son’s body from the priest’s house only hours after the incident — news of events having traveled faster than the eagle flies — but he came calmly with his four remaining sons bearing no malice. And, although a mixed incendiary flame of anger and despair burned in his liquid brown eyes and his broad shoulders shook visibly under his thick buckskin coat, he entered the house solemnly and placed a hand over his son’s eyes tenderly without an angry word. Something in his face showed leniency, showed he understood what had transpired in this desecrated house, and showed that he had already forgiven whoever was responsible for his loss. He looked sadly at Isabelle, who sat slumped in a wicker chair at the far end of the room where Madame Lowell had left her, head in one thin hand, loose dark curls damp with tears and blood, wet swollen eyes closed shut and pale lips quivering.
This must be the girl, he thought silently to himself. For some time his son had been like a young buck in the mating season. As a father he watched secretly proud as his son seemed to grow by bounds over the course of several months from a reedy and quietly assured boy into a strong-minded and almost imposing young man. There was a new strength in his brow and a chiseled appearance in his jaw. Into his eyes came a softer light, where before frequent flashes of a too-clever, all-knowing, and sometimes benignly mischievous glare would reign, revealing the confidence of a youngest child upon whom parents doted.
The father had seen his older sons paired with young maidens from their tribe and three had already made vows of marriage. One was about to make him a grandfather. But with Walk-Tall, this awakening was different. He was completely transformed. Between the summer months and the intervening autumn, a new articulation of words had suddenly formed and a refinement in his mannerisms became subtly apparent. Always a cooperative child and a considerate helper around the home, he now became like a courteous servant to his mother. She smiled as she tended her extensive medicine garden and also silently reveled in her son’s new maturity. When spring arrived they waited patiently for him to come forth with some news or reveal the source of this transformation.
But when news finally arrived it was not at all as they had hoped for or expected. Word had been sent through the Indian grapevine from one of the sheriff’s sources to find out which young Indian was not where he should be, and before long, one of Walk-Tall’s cousins came urgently to their home to give them the terrible news. Not a soul uttered a word as the stoic father gestured for his four sons to walk with him to retrieve their brother, while their bereaved mother retreated into their home to pray to the gods for her youngest.
The constable and his men arrived shortly after the mêlée and, after questioning Madame Lowell and examining the victims, they left her to attend to the bodies which they had lain out for her — one on the priest’s bed and the other on a wide bench beneath the dining room window. Madame Lowell removed the hunting knife and dressed both the priest and the young brave the best she could, pressing bandages and towels into the mortal wounds to stem the tide of blood. The knife wound no longer bled, but the flow from the gunshot wounds seemed to defy her efforts. She righted the overturned furniture and mopped up all but a tiny smear of the blood from the timber floor by the time the young Indian’s family arrived. Solemnly greeting them at the door, she said nothing as the father removed the leather holster from his son’s belt and replaced the hunting knife into it. This he held for a long moment in his left hand, his eyes lowered, before he walked over to the weeping girl and laid it carefully beside her on the wicker divan. Madame Lowell held the door open silently as the small soundless band lifted their fallen brother and son into their arms and carried him out of the house, onto the back of a tall palomino, and into the dark of night.
•
By the time the new stone and brick façade cathedral in St.-Gérard was completed some three months later, the town of Solpetrière and its already struggling timber mill was completely deserted. It was now late spring–early summer, and the turbulence in Isabelle’s heart had subsided to a low uneasy burn. Her grieving took the shape of work, and each passing day she applied herself to the cleaning of house, stable, and church and the grooming of the vegetable garden and orchard with a dedication looked upon by Madame Lowell as a sign of her emotional healing.
Madame Lowell had long ago removed all of Father Jacob’s clothing and personal items which could not be given to charity, and locked them into two large leather cases. With the assistance of the sheriff and his men she buried the priest in the small graveyard beside his church, waiting just long enough for a young priest newly arrived from Lyon via Québec to travel to Solpetrière to give her old friend his last rites posthumously and sprinkle dust upon his lowered casket. The modest stone cross was inscribed with Jacob Sébastiani’s name and dates. No mention was made of his ordained status or the nature of his demise. Madame Lowell did not cry, but that night she prayed for his salvation on her knees at her bedside for much longer than her old body could bear. She prayed this way nightly until the day Isabelle finally arose from her traumatic stupor.
She was still a painfully frail frame of skin and bones after her long convalescence, but when Isabelle finally arose, she sprang into action as if wound up like a spinning top. Although the housework brought color to her cheeks somewhat, it did nothing to put flesh upon her frame. From that day onward, the two women never addressed the fact directly that they were the only two remaining inhabitants of the town, preferring instead to go about their chores, stopping only briefly to make a meal twice a day from the remaining stores in the larder, and what was sprouting in the garden. Each night after supper they knelt together in the empty church and prayed in silence for an hour. Early one morning Isabelle arose from her bed and strode into the kitchen in her bedclothes to find Madame Lowell dressed for an outing.
“We are nearly out of staples. Flour and salt,” she announced when Isabelle appeared in the doorway, wrapping a light shawl around her rounded shoulders and brushing off an old straw hat which Isabelle had never seen off the small nail in the pantry where it hung gathering dust. “I will make us some bread this day. We need to bring you back to health, my girl. You mustn’t stay this thin, it is not right for a girl — a young woman — your age to be thinner than a willow switch.”
“I am fine, Madame Lowell,” Isabelle replied, leaning subtly against the breakfast table to steady herself. “I have not had an appetite for a while. But today seems a bit different. I will be fine. Please do not go to any trouble on my behalf.” She sat down now as her head began to spin slightly and her stomach grumbled with something like a hunger pang at the thought of fresh bread.
“No such thing as trouble,” the older woman gently cooed. “I will go around to the stable and rig up Béatrice with the old horse cart. It has been many years since this old housekeeper has ridden that trap, but God willing, I shall be fine for a careful jaunt into St.-Gérard.”
“I’ll go, Madame Lowell. The mare and I need to get re-acquainted … ”
“Oh no, you will not. I’ll not have you falling over halfway to St.-Gérard from here. I’ll manage. I may be old and too round for my own good, but I do have excellent balance. My mother was a fine equestrienne, you know.” She planted the straw bonnet upon her upswept gray chignon and tied the faded blue ribbon resolutely under her double chin. “Now, make yourself a good breakfast, all right? Old Renate and Brigitte have left you two beautiful brown eggs. I’m off … shall be back before noon.” Madame Lowell swung the door closed and briskly trotted off to the stable, leaving Isabelle alone again in the quiet sun-lit kitchen.
For the first time in over three months Isabelle was gripped with a hunger pang so intense she nearly fainted. Staring at the two perfectly oval hen’s eggs nestled on a kitchen towel on the stove — one a deep rust color and the other a pale creamier tan with a sprinkling of light brown freckles — she thought to
herself, they are a beautifully mixed pair. A tear escaped one eye just as she heard hesitant hoof steps treading over the hard ground behind the house and the roll of heavy cartwheels. Wiping away her tear, she waved the horse and rider goodbye through the window as they strode by, and for an instant forgot about her momentary lapse into longing.
As the horse-cart careened along the unfamiliar road, Madame Lowell’s thoughts lingered on what she would propose to Isabelle in the evening. Going to St.-Gérard that morning had initially been something of a frightening prospect for her. Not only was it the unfamiliar road that bothered her, for it had always been Father Jacob or one of his loyal young volunteers who rode into town for items that could not be bought in Solpetrière itself — but it was also the prospect of meeting up with former parishioners of Father Jacob’s church that had put her off the trip for as long as it did. But provisions were getting too low to ignore and the deed had to be done.
In her traveling bonnet and lurching her way into town on the old-styled horse-cart, Madame Lowell felt self-conscious and not a little ashamed — but of what, she could not rightly place her finger upon. Was it the fact that she had written an official letter to Québec and been ignored? What did people think of her now? Was she seen as a silly old woman without a sense of the obvious? Or was it the fact that she was fiercely loyal to Father Jacob, right up to the moment he revealed his true colors? But Father Jacob was truly a good man; she remembered how he had reached out to lend a hand across Canada at the time her husband and her sons had died and left her all alone. He had been a ray of hope and a conduit across the grave to her loved ones. It was true, his ranting had become beyond outlandish, but she never thought he would ever do anyone harm, particularly to a guest in his own house. But what he brought upon himself, his niece, and the entire town was unforgivable. Without a doubt, she needed to let go of her saintly image of him and move forward to do whatever was needed to help Isabelle, who was now without any family. Like herself.