Song of Batoche

by Caron, Maia;

  “When the soldiers come,” he said, “will they burn our house?”

  Josette wanted to believe that Middleton’s men would be too intent on reaching Batoche to burn houses on their march north. “Non, mon p’tit,” she said, “it will be here when we get back.”

  “What of this?” Eulalie asked, holding up the old lead tea case they used to hold beads and thread. Josette nodded. Anything made of tin or lead was reserved for the pile that would be melted down to cast buckshot for their men.

  It was the end of April, spring, but the trees would not break into leaf for a few weeks yet. The temperature could fluctuate wildly in a day, the morning cold until sun broke through cloud cover to warm the air. Small sloughs still glistened out on the pastures, melted snow that had not yet sunk into the wet ground. Josette wanted to be in her garden; it was time to seed potatoes and carrots, but they were missing the chance. The men should be in the fields plowing the soil for oats and hay and barley. Instead, they were scouting or going in to Batoche, feverishly digging rifle pits to fight an army that outnumbered them five to one.

  She saw Cleophile carrying a pile of blankets from the house out to the wagon in the front yard. Josette turned and went out to the barn to find the tipi canvas that Norbert used when freighting. Eulalie will catch the lung disease, she thought as she shook it out, sleeping on the ground in this weather. When she headed back, the sound of a familiar unsettling cough made her look up. Madeleine stood on the front porch, holding her shawl close around her throat. Josette slowly climbed the steps.

  “Gabriel’s wound has festered,” Madeleine admitted. Josette was suddenly mortified, ashamed, that her neighbour had come to beg herbs from a woman she suspected was attracted to her husband. Madeleine had been right to begrudge Gabriel’s attention to her. Their marriage was not unhappy. And yet Josette continued to violate that bond by caring for a man she had no right to think of as anything but a fellow disciple of Riel, a trusted friend.

  “What do you have to stop the bleeding?”

  “Yarrow,” Madeleine said, not meeting her eyes. “I packed the wound and made a poultice. He falls into a tormented sleep and wakes shouting with pain. Only another poultice and draught of tea will drug him back to rest.”

  Josette thought of Gabriel in Batoche, taking charge of his men, ordering them to dig rifle pits. All with an infected head wound and burning with fever. “He should rest.”

  “You know as well as I do that he cannot. It is like nothing you have ever seen—a riven strip along the top of his head—too far apart to stitch closed—and almost an inch deep. It still pulses blood.”

  She told her that she would bring down what she had, and Madeleine left without another word. Josette went down to her root cellar in the summer kitchen, remembering Moulin’s words to her after the berry picking ceremony.

  “You think you walk in the Law of Love, when you have broken every one of His commandments? You do not love God. That is the requirement! You dwell in the law of sin.”

  When she had taken herbs to abort her own child, she had not believed it a sin, but she was sinning now. Twenty-seven years Gabriel and Madeleine had been married. Josette sank down on the lowest step of the ladder and closed her eyes. Despite the healing power in the hanging rows of herbs and roots, her lungs were filled with the bitter scent of death. She thought of her talk with Gabriel last summer on the way to Prince Albert to see her grandfather. How he had avoided her afterward, only coming around when he needed more help with Riel. It struck her that she had misread his expression in that birch forest, the heat of his gaze when he had made the promise, I will not let him fail. The great Gabriel Dumont had glimpsed her sorrow, her secrets and doubts and her relentless grief. His gaze had not been one of appreciation. It had been dismay. She had misread every one of Gabriel’s looks, mistaking them for something meaningful. Now she heard “Kiya,” You, as an expression of his frustration at her appearing again, adding to his burdens.

  The small underground cellar seemed like a dark womb to her or a prison, the crushing stillness and cold seeping into her bones. She stood slowly and pulled down the last of her devil’s club roots and stalks of a dried spiked flower, which she knew only the Cree word for: kipôh-kâskan. She ground the root and flower into powder and by the time she had crossed the pasture that afternoon with the blend in a cloth under her arm, she had persuaded herself to stop this foolish obsession. For that’s what it was—a dream she had made up in her own desperate heart.

  She found Madeleine in her kitchen. “Make a poultice,” she said, unwrapping the bundle. “It will draw out the infection.”

  Madeleine nodded in thanks and turned to sort through her cast iron frying pans. Henriette Nolin and Gabriel’s sister Isabel Ouellette had been helping her and came in from loading her sewing machine onto the cart in the front yard.

  Isabel started to take down the framed photographs of Jesus and the saints from the kitchen walls, when Henriette cried, “Non,” startling her. “Father Moulin says keep them up. It will save the house.”

  Madeleine frowned. “That priest is a prisoner in the rectory and has refused us the sacraments—refused our dead a Catholic burial. Why are you talking with him?”

  Henriette coloured and began to speak of the uproar caused when Joseph Pilon and his family had been caught packing up their possessions to make off for their relations in the States.

  Madeleine folded a blanket in half, her work-hardened hands smoothing it flat on the kitchen table. “Gabriel told me that at Tourond’s Coulee, Pilon rode down with the men, took a few shots at the English, then slunk off when the fire got too hot. Riel had a talk with him the next day, and he crawled like a child to the priests.”

  “If a man does not want to fight, he should not fight,” said Henriette.

  Madeleine, Isabel, and Josette exchanged looks. News had come that Henriette’s husband, Charles Nolin, had been captured in Prince Albert and was being held by the police. How could she still defend a man who had deserted, leaving her and their children to face a government attack? It was no wonder she went to the priests.

  “It is unlucky to live in Batoche,” Henriette continued. “Métis in other places are not forced to fight.”

  “Forced?” Madeleine cried. “They are cowards not to come help us. We are all in this mess together. Some Anglais will move in and set his ass in their houses, too. They are nothing but old buffalo bulls the herd has cut away to be taken by wolves.” She snatched up a pile of blankets for the cart.

  “Oui,” Henriette agreed. “Weak animals die, strong animals live.”

  Josette went quietly out the back door, and up through the side pasture to her barn, intending to saddle La Noire and ride to fetch the Spinoza from its hiding place on the bluff. She peered into the stalls. To prepare for the chickens, Mimoux, and La Noire to move with them to Batoche, Josette had asked Cleophile to bring down some hay from the loft. But the horse and cow greeted her with hopeful anticipation of having their feed troughs filled. Muffled laughter drifted down to her from the hayloft, and Josette looked up to find Cleophile and Alexandre sitting up there with their heads together, giggling.

  “What are you doing?” she said, her voice shrill.

  Alexandre stood. “Nothing, just talking.”

  Josette could feel the blood rise in her cheeks. “A man is not interested in talking to a woman.” She stared at Cleophile. “And you are a woman now, is that right? Eager to lift your skirt for any man that comes along?”

  Cleophile’s face was made of stone. “Look at you, off to your hiding place—don’t be surprised. Do you think I did not know what you have been doing all this time?”

  “Why have you grown to hate me?”

  “I do not hate you. Only what you’ve become since you fell in love with Riel.”

  “I am not in love with him. And your father is not the first man to take a woman at One Arrow’s. You know I will die if I become pregnant again.” She threw Alexandre an accusing l
ook. “And you must learn that a man can make you pregnant in seconds—that is how romantic love is.”

  Alexandre frowned and shook his head. “I am courting Mary-Jane Ouellette. Cleophile and I are amis.”

  Josette stormed out of the barn and across the pasture. Henriette and Isabel were out at the cart, but she found Madeleine standing in her kitchen, with every available pot in her arms.

  “We cannot get the washing machine out of the root cellar in the summer kitchen,” Madeleine said. “But what would les Anglais want with a thing like that?”

  “Your son has been messing with my daughter,” Josette cried. “She is only twelve.”

  Madeleine turned and glared at her. “Alexandre would not do such a thing.”

  “He is sixteen and a man.”

  “He would not—”

  “How do you know? He is your adopted son, come to you already grown.” She immediately regretted her words.

  “You are a fine one,” Madeleine said from between her teeth. “Alexandre helps Cleophile when you are away—she is la p’tite mère, making sure Norbert is fed. Lying for you, so he will not beat you when you come home from fucking another woman’s husband.”

  Isabel and Henriette had come up the porch steps in time to see Madeleine dissolve into a racking cough and cover her mouth as she bent over, choking. She reached into her skirt pocket for a handkerchief but did not get it out in time.

  Josette was close enough to see the blood that specked her hand.

  an embarrassing but

  novel position

  Gabriel had been bothered all night in the tent he shared with Madeleine on the riverbank in Batoche. Lying still made him feel every throbbing pain in his head, as though God Himself had placed a belt around his skull and took joy in tightening it slowly. Hours before dawn, he had managed to slip away without Madeleine waking and rode south, compelled to see if Middleton’s soldiers had looted his farm.

  He sat on his horse in the trees for half an hour, watching his deserted house and barn to make sure the enemy was not about and finally went down to look around. Madeleine’s washing machine was in the root cellar, his pool table still in the saloon. There were signs that enemy scouts had been in. At least they had not burned the place, but one or more of them had pissed in a corner.

  Dawn had not yet lightened the sky when Gabriel came out of the house. He could smell another man’s horse and ducked back in the door, but a familiar whistle made him release his finger from the trigger of his gun. One of his own scouts. Damase Carrière rode out from behind the barn. He had been riding to Batoche to make a morning report to the council that Middleton still remained camped only miles from the battlefield.

  “Ten days since the fight,” Gabriel mused. “What is he waiting for?”

  Damase, who had been watching the camp since yesterday, said that the general was putting his men through rifle practice. Gabriel jumped on his horse, turning it south. He had relied thus far on Jérôme Henry’s reports of Middleton, but he wanted to see for himself. When he had been the captain of the hunt, he and his men had scouted out for days, looking for the herds. Anglais soldiers were just a different kind of animal.

  Half a mile north of the camp, he and Damase tied their horses in a dense copse of willow on the riverbank, evading Middleton’s two lines of guards. Gabriel could have picked them off to take revenge for his brother’s death, but the sentries were young, naïve men who had been eating and talking, unaware that the enemy was within shooting distance.

  Dawn was breaking over the South Saskatchewan when the two Métis crouched behind a boulder above Middleton’s camp. Gabriel had taken out his field glasses and surveyed the many tents when one flap opened and a portly figure emerged, clad in a grey, formal uniform and long leather boots. The same man he had seen commanding his soldiers at the coulee.

  “Eh,” whispered Damase. “There he is.”

  Middleton fixed a fur cap on his head and walked briskly through camp, his cane swinging. He went to the river’s edge and briefly looked into the water, studied the far bank, and then squinted at the sky, as if taking note of the weather. One of his men came out of another tent and swung a great coat across his shoulders, keeping an eye on his commanding officer. It was true then—the general was on guard against a sudden attack from the Sioux and their scalping knives.

  Gabriel studied Middleton. This môniyâw, white man, was soft and weak, smoking his pipe and stroking his white mustaches. If he were a buffalo, Gabriel would ride past, judging him unworthy of killing. But perhaps he had underestimated the strength of this prey—it might look like a bloated buffalo cow, yet it behaved more like a trapped fox.

  Teamsters were up, tending to their oxen. Gabriel regarded the wagonloads of supplies and ammunition with proprietary envy. And anger. If the damn Hudson’s Bay Company hadn’t rushed in to save the army with water, feed for their horses, and good pay for two hundred teamsters—many of them English half-breeds—they would still be stuck in Qu’Appelle.

  Near the riverbank, a large wooden cross had been thrust into a pile of stones, marking the site where they had buried their dead. The general paced on the bank, looking up the river with an expectant expression. Several other officers were coming out of their tents.

  Years ago, Gabriel had seen a photograph of the prime minister, and now he searched for one with a resemblance to Sir John. “Show me this Lieutenant Hugh Macdonald,” he whispered to himself, moving the field glasses from one face to another. “Show me.” The Dominion leader would listen if his only son was held captive by the Métis.

  Middleton would soon march north. There were twenty miles between the army and Batoche. It was said that before the general went to bed, he visited each sentry on his piquet lines, and his commanding officers checked on them every few hours until dawn. Les Anglais were vigilant, but this did not stop Gabriel from playing a scene over and over in his head: lead fifty of his best men in the night, set a fire around these tents, hem them in, and it would all be over. But Riel would not allow it.

  There will be no more ambushes … no more blood spilled on the sacred soil of the Métis.

  Forced to meet the army in Riel’s City of God, Gabriel had been doing everything he could to make it difficult for Middleton. Rifle pits were being dug everywhere around the village. No Anglais general would outflank him. News had come that Poundmaker had been forced to surrender his power to the Rattler Society—warriors headed up by Fine Day, who now controlled his band—and Riel’s council had agreed to send four men up there to bring them to Batoche. Two days ago, the Indian camp had been attacked by one of Middleton’s officers and his troops up near Battleford. The Rattler Society had driven off the soldiers, but there had been reports of a new kind of gun used against them, one they had described as issuing so many bullets at once, it was like a swarming host of wasps. Hearing of this gun made Gabriel nervous. If Poundmaker didn’t arrive before Middleton did in Batoche and bring the area chiefs, the Métis would surely lose this war.

  Riel had put much importance on the Indians, but Madeleine was right: what of the Métis throughout the Territories, Battle River and Qu-Appelle? Their relations in Red River? He and Isidore had visited half-breed communities from Prairie Ronde, Fort à la Corne, and into the Cypress Hills. The council had also sent letters beseeching them for help. Without delay come this way, as many as possible. Send us news.

  Some had trickled in—old buffalo hunters that Gabriel had known on the plains. But the majority had not. If all Métis men in the Territories stood behind them, Macdonald would have listened to the petition, and they would not have been forced to take up arms. Riel had never admitted it, but Gabriel and others thought these men knew better: they did not wish to be involved in a war that would end badly.

  Damase nudged him. One of the old Hudson’s Bay steamers had come into view around a bend in the river. They watched as the ship threw anchor and soldiers came up from the hold. A strange thing was wheeled up from below. The fi
rst rays of sun flashed behind it, revealing a hulking monster. Soldiers backed against the railings as it crept across the deck, the long snout with many nostrils, a dragon with a long crest atop its head. It crawled down the gangplank, creaking.

  “C’est le Rababou,” said Damase. “The one they used on Poundmaker.”

  “Rababou.” Years ago, Gabriel had fought the Blackfoot and bands of Sioux warriors over buffalo hunting territory. But this thing struck fear into him.

  The sun rose over the trees on the west bank, sending long shafts of golden light across the river. Soldiers massed around le Rababou and pushed it, squelching through the mud. Gabriel saw it now in the shadow cast by the boat. A wheeled carriage linked by an axle. A dozen gun barrels joined as one, and a long handle on top for the one who would wield its power.

  i will raise up evil

  Mosquitoes and may flies rose out of the wolf willow scrub as Josette and young Virginie Tourond climbed the riverbank trail the next morning. In her apron, Josette carried half a dozen still-warm bannocks that had come off the cooking fires. Virginie, who was heavily pregnant, held several roasted ducks wrapped in a blanket under her arm. The cutbank below the cemetery sloped gradually to the river and was now camp to many of the families that had come in on the council’s order. A series of shallow dugouts had been made on either side of the trail among the willow scrag, each shielded by an overturned cart or tipi cloth.

  A small herd of their dairy cows grazed contentedly in the meadow near the cemetery, kept close to provide them milk. The stock cattle and horses were pastured in the fields north of the village. After the horse massacre at Tourond’s Coulee, Riel and Gabriel would not let the English slaughter their only means of survival. As the two women passed the church, the sound of children singing drifted from an open window.