Song of Batoche

by Caron, Maia;

  “It is good of our council to think of the young ones,” said Virginie.

  Josette remained silent. It had seemed a noble effort to bring in a French-Canadian schoolteacher from St. Louis de Langevin settlement near Prince Albert, but she knew the real objective was to prevent families from deserting the riverbank camp by keeping their children in the church all day.

  The air was still except for the sound of shovels and picks hacking at the earth in rhythmic chinks. Riel had lectured them over the fifty-five horses that had been killed by Middleton’s big guns. He declared that God had long been offended by the Métis’ gambling on horse racing, and He would be appeased only if they all fasted for four days. But Riel was in a council meeting, and the working men would eat.

  After delivering food to those digging in the woods behind the church and rectory, the two women headed to the Jolie Prairie pits. Virginie was close to her time and pestered Josette with questions to do with the mysteries of labour, and her wish to keep the baby from coming until the men finished their warring. As they passed a stand of poplar, a flock of black-throated sparrows rose from the bare branches and turned as one into the sky. To encourage her, Josette said birth was as natural a process as a flower coming to bud or a bird taking wing.

  She glanced back, thinking that her own children’s births had been nothing but studies in pain and torture. Riel’s white flag, the symbol of his Catholic Apostolic Church, fluttered outside the rectory. The figure of the Mother Mary appeared to be walking forward, but was trapped forever on that white patch of cloth. There was a flash of movement to the left of the church, and Josette was surprised to see Cleophile running across to the rectory. The front door opened and her eldest daughter disappeared inside. Josette faltered. Why had she left the church school? And why had the priests allowed her in the rectory when her father and mother were aligned to Riel?

  She wanted to go back, but would not leave Virginie to carry the food alone. The sun had climbed higher in the sky by the time Josette arrived at the rectory. Moulin, the Fathers Vegreville, Fourmond, and four Irish nuns from St. Laurent had been confined there for the past month. She found Moulin cooking a thin gruel of last year’s oats on the stove. The kitchen was a mess, for the structure had been built to house one or two people, not seven. Cleophile was nowhere to be seen.

  The priest raised one of his overgrown brows at the sight of her. “What will Riel think if you are seen consorting with the enemy? You don’t expect that I will hear your confession.”

  Josette did not meet his eye. “I do not wish to confess.”

  “But you need it more than anyone.” He gestured at the state of the kitchen. “You see we are under house arrest,” he said, and added in a sarcastic tone, “for our safety.” He showed her a piece of paper. “Riel made us sign this, promising to remain neutral and not leave this place without the consent of his sham government. He declares he will now act as our spiritual advisor—priests of God! And the flag of his hérétique church flying outside our door. There is nothing left but to beat us and put us to death.”

  Josette did not tell him that everyone was watched. Each Métis arriving in Batoche had been ordered to take an oath of faith to the movement and the provisional government’s laws. Even the scouts required permission from their capitaines to leave. She looked toward the stairs, expecting Cleophile to come down. “You are free to bring the prisoners their meals.”

  Moulin’s face was rigid. “I would rather not see those pauvres misérables. Each time we open the door, they are desperate to be set free.” She asked after Honoré Jaxon, and Moulin said he seemed not quite as mad after his brother Eastwood had come down from Prince Albert to visit him, but Riel had imprisoned him, too. “Honoré is wasting in that room,” he said. “He lets others take his share of food.”

  “I saw my daughter come here,” she said. “Did you offer her the sacraments?”

  “Cleophile’s piety should not be questioned by you.” He watched her for a moment, one hand inching unconsciously toward his mouth before he caught himself and placed it decisively in his pocket. “You doubt Riel. And yet you help him with his church.”

  “I ask you again—did you offer Cleophile the sacraments? Her father fights with the evil Louis Riel.”

  “Would you control her relationship with God?”

  “Children do not need to confess. They are without sin.”

  He shook his head in frustration. “But sin might be done to them.”

  She was startled, both hurt and concerned that Cleophile had chosen to trust this priest. But he could not violate the sanctity of the confessional by telling Josette of her own daughter’s fears.

  Moulin regarded her with growing impatience. “You are her mother,” he said, lifting a finger to his lips to chew at the nail. “Can you not see that she is unhappy?”

  “Cleophile has become a stranger to me.”

  “Thus saith the Lord,” he thundered, resorting to scripture to make his point. “Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house.” He pointed his finger at her. “You have neglected your children with your poems and Riel.”

  He came toward her, and she flinched in spite of herself.

  “Do you not think Riel est fou?” He looked at her keenly, as if expecting an answer. When she did not give one, he said, “You have displeased the Lord and are being punished. Repent as David did. Lie all night upon the earth. Fast—”

  “All the Métis are fasting. It means nothing.”

  “You fast for Riel’s church, his sins. Not your own.” He reached around her and opened the door. “Go and find your daughter then. Beg forgiveness for neglecting her. And ask Riel to tell you of the two years he spent locked in an insane asylum!”

  the blood of

  christ

  That afternoon, Riel stood on the west bank of the river in his outdoor chapel, eyes closed and head bowed.

  “God, in Your mercy,” he prayed to his congregation, “touch these women’s hearts so that they will devote themselves entirely to overcoming all the deficiencies which Rome has inculcated in the peoples of the earth.”

  He opened his eyes and was met by the welcome sight of his wife, Marguerite. The attentive expression on her sweet, obliging face almost broke his heart. But the sixty or so Métis women crowding the clearing were looking everywhere else but at him. Some even glanced to St. Antoine de Padoue, which was visible across the river, its whitewashed steeple stark against the sky.

  He lifted his worn leather Bible. “The Roman Church,” he reminded them, “is opulent and tarnished by greed, compared to your new one, humble in its sacred poverty.”

  A flock of ducks roused themselves from the reeds, fluttering over the surface of the water in a blur of wings. The clearing in the woods was an idyllic setting where the Métis with farms on the west bank could worship. He had not bargained for it to give the women a perfect view of their old church. Two days ago, icy rain had fallen, yet now it was warm as an early summer day, and poplar trees were beginning to send out their buds. The natural beauty of the grove should have buoyed his spirits, but his heart was filled with foreboding.

  Sun shone down through the branches, almost directly upon the altar, which was only a rough plank nailed between two trees. A photograph of Jesus—his sacred heart aflame—had been attached to one of the trunks with a few tin tags from a plug tobacco container. Upon the altar, Marguerite had placed a jar of milk and a bannock wrapped in cloth. The cross that Riel had taken from the Duck Lake church was braced precariously behind these items, and he stared hard at it, praying, do not let it fall, Lord.

  Riel swayed in a trance brought on by hunger. Clouds passed over the sun and mosquitoes found them, rising in a fog from the damp earth. The women wrapped shawls and blankets closer around their necks and murmured amongst themselves. Henriette Parenteau and Gigitte Caron regarded him with particular wariness, and he was convinced it was women like these who were behind their men resisting a Saturday Sa
bbath and leaving the Roman Church. Gigitte, it was said, supplied the priests and nuns with milk from her cows.

  There was a bad taste in Riel’s mouth. Either the sour bile that came from fasting, or the memory of the council meeting this morning, when Moise Ouellette had refused to vote on a decision that—with God’s and Christ’s help—a miracle would save the Métis from General Middleton. Rushing out in a temper, Riel had gone to the riverbank camp to find his wife. As he approached the cooking fires, he overheard the women express fear that their men would face battle again without a priest to give them communion and hear their confessions.

  He had immediately herded them onto the ferry and to the chapel to receive the Eucharist, but he regretted the decision. A rifle pit was being dug nearby—the noise of trees being cut, shovels hitting rock—and many of the women strained to keep their attention on his service. The warning pressure began to build in Riel’s chest, and he gazed at the sky to beseech God.

  Send down all the charitable gifts of the priesthood, the solemn and consoling services of the true religion, edifying Your people in grace.

  He slipped the Bible in the pocket of his coat and assumed the regal bearing of a priest. Milk instead of wine. Bannock instead of the host. His mouth watered dangerously. Marguerite handed him the bread, and he could feel the women’s eyes upon him. He was painfully aware of the state of his wrinkled and filthy clothes, his untrimmed beard.

  “You would like me to have a fine soutane and a linen surplice,” he said, “but God has saved me from the decadence of the Catholic priesthood, saved me for the day when I will deliver to you the Promised Land.”

  Superstitious women and an obstinate council were the least of his worries. Riel desperately needed Poundmaker. Four Métis in the chief’s camp were working with the Rattler Society to bring the band south, but scouts had come in with news that the chief had been caught trying to escape. The Rattler Society had brought him back in and put him under guard. They would be here in a matter of days, but Riel was on edge.

  He had suffered a worrying dream last night, finding himself at the edge of a chasm. On the far side, Poundmaker had ridden up on a white horse, the sun behind him, eclipsing his face in shadow. Riel’s ears had been filled with an ominous rustling sound and he looked down in time to see a large grass snake coiled at his feet. He awoke shouting.

  To erase the memory of his dream and drown out the clang of the shovels, he lifted the bannock skyward. “Spirit of God, our Father, mercifully bless this bread.” He handed it back to Marguerite and held up the jar of milk. “Infuse this drink with your essence.”

  A few of the women had their heads together, whispering. He caught one of them saying, “An ordained priest must bless the sacrament, non?”

  “God does not require a priest to make a blessing,” he warned. “Priests are not religion.”

  Through the trees came a sudden jarring ring of shovel hitting rock, followed by a shouted oath.

  “Crisse de câlice de tabarnak!”

  Riel flushed with anger. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” he bellowed. All was still, and then voices floated through the trees, “Is that Riel?” “What is he doing on this side of the river?” “Consecrating the host, can’t you hear?”

  The women had begun to file forward, crossing themselves. It did his heart good to witness their fervour. Or were they simply anxious to have something to break their fast, if only a mouthful of bread and a sip of milk? Caroline Arcand knelt before him. Riel broke off a piece of bannock. “The body of Christ,” he murmured, placing it on her extended tongue.

  Her crude features transformed as she took the bread and mouthed her amen. She did not look at him as she rose, brushed off her skirts and turned away, her hands clasped in prayer. He was grateful when she began to sing in a quavering voice.

  “Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

  And with fear and trembling stand;

  Ponder nothing earthly minded,

  For with blessing in His hand,

  Christ our God to earth descendeth,

  Our full homage to demand.”

  One by one, each woman took the host and joined her in the psalm. Riel was ebullient. A success, he thought, as Marguerite knelt before him to receive the sacrament. When he bent to let her sip from the jar of milk, her dark eyes flicked up at him. Was it his imagination or did she also seem to regard him with distrust?

  O God, hasten to help me. Do not delay. Make the Métis vigilant, obedient, and ready for whatever happens.

  He could feel Christ’s love course through him. God would bring the Indians in time, and he would not have to send the letter he had agonized over writing to his friend in Helena, who would take it to certain men he knew in Montana, men of power. The council had agreed with him: the Hudson’s Bay Company and Dominion of Canada had no right to claim these lands, and the Indians, English, and French inhabitants should seek annexation to the U.S. But to send the letter would tempt the same fate King David had suffered, and for which God had punished him.

  Riel lifted his eyes and noticed the ferry swinging out from Fisher’s Crossing, a man on the bank pulling the cable to bring it across the river. The women’s faces turned en masse to watch its slow progress toward them.

  “The ferry comes bearing a sign from God,” he said. “There is someone on it who will bring news.” The women seemed confused and then doubtful. Some, like Domatilde Boucher, frowned and looked away.

  He launched into another hymn and soon they were singing along and swaying shoulder to shoulder, their voices a mix of off-key sopranos and a vibrating alto from Henriette Parenteau. The ferry had docked by the time they had finished the last verse, and soon there appeared on the path—which was no more than an old game trail—the resigned figures of Pierre Fleury and Bazile Godon. Unaware that they were the objects of attention, the two men walked past them toward the rifle pits, shovels pitched over their shoulders and guns in the crooks of their arms.

  Riel regarded Pierre Fleury in consternation. Why him, God? Since Tourond’s Coulee, Pierre had flagrantly ignored him. While the rest of them fasted, Pierre had brought in a rabbit he’d snared. He skinned and cleaned it, then roasted it on the riverbank campfire, gorging himself in front of everyone. But Riel had promised the women a messenger, and one such as this could only be a challenge issued from God to his prophet.

  Riel called out to him. “Pierre Fleury! You do not wish to face the enemy without God’s blessing.”

  “That’s good.” Pierre said, walking back toward them, his arm out, finger pointing across the river. “Come to the cemetery with me. There are the dead from the coulee. You will make them resurrect and I will believe in your God.”

  He walked quickly away and the women began to whisper, shaking their heads. To recapture their attention, Riel launched into his version of the sacrament of penance.

  “Come to each woman here, Lord,” he said. “Live in the very centre of their souls, take possession of their beings so they may receive from You the power to forgive the sins of those who confess to them.” He looked at them with expectation and they turned to each other reluctantly, murmuring their confessions.

  The sun was sinking behind the trees, and one last ray penetrated a bank of orange cloud. Josette was hurrying up the trail from the ferry, a look of distress on her face. Riel had never been so grateful to see his Mary Magdalene. Here was the messenger he’d been promised. But when she arrived in the clearing, she ignored him and stared around at the women with hopeful expectation.

  “Have you seen Cleophile?” she asked one of them. “Someone in Batoche said she was here with you.”

  Someone else was coming up the trail. An Indian on a horse. Riel breathed out in relief. It was Mad Bull, one of White Cap’s men, come back from Battleford. He handed a letter to Riel, who was aware of Josette’s reproving stare as he unfolded it. He tried to keep his features solemn, but as he read the letter and its damning contents, he could not h
elp but let his devastation show.

  Marguerite put her hand on his arm. “What is it?”

  Riel re-read the letter, gutted. God had promised him. Poundmaker had promised him. “It’s … from one of my men riding south with Poundmaker’s band.” A shadow fell over him and Riel glanced up, but it was only a hawk swinging over the window of sky above the clearing. “He will not let his warriors leave the women and children without protection. They are travelling south as a band and won’t be here for another week. He delays on purpose.”

  “He wants to save his people.” Josette was now regarding him with outright defiance and an appraising curiosity, as if she were seeing him for the first time. Why did he still need this impossible woman? Because his Magdalene knew better than anyone how important it was to have Poundmaker here. His wife would not like it, but Josette was the miracle he had been waiting for.

  He turned, raising his voice. “Josette’s arrival is a sign. She will go to the United States with a letter. Fifteen thousand will ride to save us from the Anglais horde.” He lifted his arms. “Spirit of God, open the route I need to send Josette south. Guide her there with Your hand.”

  Josette gathered her skirts and walked purposefully up the trail where Godon and Fleury had just disappeared.

  Riel went after her and grabbed her arm. “Would you desert me too—”

  She turned quickly and cut him off. “I must find my daughter.”

  Riel released her and looked with desperation across the river. “Let the United States protect us spontaneously,” he whispered, “through an act of Your Holy Providence.” He was weary and suddenly famished. Despite four days of fasting, God had brought nothing but bad news. And he saw something stupendous coming: a great blow. He closed his eyes to the fading light and prayed.

  Let us be ready.

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