She covered both eyes with her hands in an instinctive gesture of grief.
“No, no, you must look over there, Esther,” said Madame Lévesque, puzzled, pointing to something in the distance. It shimmered and tumbled from a vast height in sparkling rivulets that reflected more light than a thousand chandeliers. It resembled glass but was alive; flowed like water yet was more composed. At its base frothed and billowed an apparently different substance, milky and opaque, turbulent and calm at the same time, as though waves had begun tumbling towards shore without arriving there to break on the vast white sands that stretched in all directions. Sands upon which dozens of people gathered in horse-drawn sleds and on foot, while dogs cavorted, barking and yipping, and more Indians stood silently watching, some wrapped in red and black blankets, others in leather garments pulling toboggans of provisions behind them.
What she beheld was a huge cataract, frozen mid-fall from almost a hundred feet high, retaining the memory of motion but suspended as though time itself had paused between breaths to admire it more fully.
“Where are we?” Esther whispered.
“The falls of Montmorency,” Madame Lévesque replied. Esther quickly clambered out of the cariole, not waiting for the other ladies to disengage themselves from their heavy layers of insulation. They in turn were quite content to admire the view from the comfort of their vehicle, and to enjoy her excitement vicariously. She ran towards the waterfall, quickly sinking into the snow up to her knees until she could run no further. The air was so pure she felt drunk, so cold her breath sparked in her lungs and caught in her chest in painful gasps.
Esther had had little experience of snow before this winter in Quebec, and none at all of snow this deep, as deep as a pond. At first she pretended to swim through it, making the ladies in the carriage laugh. Then she swung her arms across the peaks of the drifts so that a storm of white flakes whirled around her. Snow was such a strange substance, impossible to describe. It covered the ground like sand, as though it were quite dry and substantial. But as soon as it was touched, it magically dissolved. It floated down as delicate blossoms, spun webs as fine as lace, then gathered together in great clumps like sticky clay. When it froze it became transparent; otherwise it was opaque. Snow reminded her of many things that it was not, but all comparisons cancelled each other out so that it remained utterly and only itself.
She let herself fall onto her back and gazed up into the sky, the same blue dome that covered the earth. Where did it end? And, if it did end, what was beyond it? Crossing the ocean, Esther had often stared into the heavens feeling exactly like this: simultaneously small and infinite, enthralled by the paradox. In such a grand cosmos she herself was of no consequence, which was humbling. But at the same time it was liberating, because neither was anyone else. No matter how important they thought they were, they were lost among all the living and all the dead, in a world beyond their comprehension. The heavens do indeed declare the glory of God. But they also insist that everyone is equal.
Preoccupied with avoiding controversy and pleasing people since her masquerade had been discovered, Esther had forgotten this fleeting but all-encompassing revelation. Now it flooded back, accompanied by a supernatural fineness of discrimination that had her feeling the weight of each flake that tickled her eyelashes, hearing each sigh of the snow beneath her as it shifted under her weight, seeing innumerable gradations of blue in the sky above her and a thousand shifting forms in the clouds streaming unimaginably far overhead. She didn’t need to become an Indian to worship nature. It belonged to her as much — and as little — as it did to them.
“She is quite a discovery, this wild child of yours,” Madame Duplessis remarked, watching Esther’s rapture with a wistful smile on her face.
“I know. But I feel sorry for her; Hocquart has no idea what to do with her so she spends entire days all by herself in his library.”
“Perhaps one of us might take her in.”
“You should ask the Intendant to let her be your companion, Madeleine. Your eyes are so bad now. She could read to you.”
“Do you think Monsieur Hocquart would agree to such a plan?” asked Madame Duplessis.
“I intend to insist he does,” said Madame Lévesque.
Esther swam her way back to the carriage and climbed up to join them, covered with snow but happier than she’d been in months. She thanked the ladies for bringing her to this temple of beauty and agreed, reluctantly, that she’d experienced enough of it for one day. With a flick of the reins, they were off again.
Esther — who’d had little opportunity for exercise in her months of confinement and was exhausted in both body and mind — relaxed into the rhythm of the ride and the warmth of the bearskins. Now she was the one who felt sleepy. The ladies chatted about their health, their grandchildren, whether Esther was comfortable living with the Intendant, whether she was happy in New France, but were often quiet themselves as well. The falling snow seemed to insist upon silence, muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves and the squeaking of the carriage; making their voices sound as hushed as if they were in a house of worship. As they drew closer to town, everyday sounds were subdued, the barking of a dog as startling as the red blanket of a passing Indian in that world of white.
And then the sled slowed, and stopped, and the tired horses tossed their snowy manes with a crystalline jingle of bells. They had arrived at the Intendant’s palace. Esther scrutinized the long, two-storey stone building that had been her home for more than three months. When she arrived she had thought it spacious and elegant, but how grim and confining it looked after the fairyland of Montmorency Falls. It was easy to remember that laws were made in this building: laws to control the actions of New France and to punish those who failed to submit their will to that of the King and his representatives. Thus far she had succeeded in evading those laws because she was an outsider; no one knew how to apply conventional rules to her maverick behaviour. But the longer she stayed, the more difficult it would become to escape their confines. She would have to figure out some strategy to stay in New France without submitting.
Unsure what her next move ought to be, she did the only thing that came to mind. She jumped out of the carriage once more into the snow.
“You are as silly as a puppy his first winter, Esther,” said Madame Lévesque, as she pounded the brass fleur-de-lys knocker on the huge oak door. “Go get out of those wet clothes right away while we speak to Monsieur Hocquart.”
As soon as Marie-Thérèse appeared, the ladies asked to see the Intendant. They were ushered into a cold, damp waiting room while Esther ran down the hall, leaving puddles as she went. Madame Duplessis lowered herself gingerly into a deep armchair decorated with a needlepoint picture of nymphs in gauzy white garments dancing between marble fountains and green trees covered with ripe lemons shining like miniature suns — an image from a world an ocean away: a world she herself had never visited. Madame Lévesque looked about for cushions and a footstool to prop up the old lady’s swollen feet. She was able to wrap her friend in a blanket of coarse local wool, then settled herself close to the fire, which she stirred up with a poker held between stiff fingers.
When Monsieur Hocquart arrived a half-hour later, bewildered at the summons but unwilling to turn away such prominent citizens, he found the two ladies as comfortably ensconced in his parlour as though they were in their own homes, drinking chocolate prepared for them by Esther and biscuits baked by Marie-Thérèse. They hadn’t waited for him to offer hospitality but commandeered it themselves, and continued to act as though they were in charge, sending his servants away and asking him to sit down and listen to what they had to say.
The Intendant perched, reluctantly, on the edge of a hard wooden chair — rough pine, of local manufacture — as though about to spring up any minute. He did not appreciate having his workday interrupted. But he listened to Madame Lévesque’s proposal with increasing interest; perhaps this really would be the best course for everyone involved.
The girl would be taken care of until orders arrived in the spring, and he himself would cease to be the subject of trivial gossip and speculation amongst the idle rich. No longer would conversations stop abruptly when he entered a room, nor would the Governor General make scurrilous jokes at his expense. He would perform a service to Madame Duplessis and help himself at the same time.
He agreed to let Esther go with her.
Marie-Thérèse was heartbroken; she couldn’t imagine returning to her former solitude. She asked timidly if the girl might stay longer, perhaps until after Easter with all its attendant festivities, but Hocquart fixed her with a stern look and told Esther to go get her things and to be grateful for finding so benevolent a patron. The housekeeper accompanied Esther to her room, where she gave her a fierce hug and whispered “You are the daughter I never had.” Esther hugged her back for the first and only time, and pressed into the older woman’s hand the wooden moussoir she had brought all the way from France: the only thing of value she owned.
“You will need this to make Monsieur Hocquart his chocolate,” she said, between laughter and tears. And then she picked up her bag and walked out of the Intendant’s palace into a new life.
NINE
“Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal.”
(A change of scene, a change of fortune.)
ALTHOUGH MADAME DUPLESSIS SPENT her early years on her father’s seigneury in the Sillery district and her adolescence at the Ursuline convent, after marriage she resided in a big stone house on the Chemin Saint-Louis. It was a very grand building indeed, two storeys high like many residences in upper town but differing from most in having extensive land behind it. Since the death of her husband, she had ceded the house to her oldest son and his family and moved into a much smaller building adjacent, though she spent as much time as possible in her old garden. She loved the modest dower house of her widowhood where everything she needed was on the ground floor: her bedroom, her chapel, the kitchen, dining room, and parlour. Upstairs were the servants’ quarters, at the moment almost empty as the housekeeper lived out, as did the father and son who took care of her horse and carriage. The cook had her own room, where she kept an overfed cat that spent most of the day drowsing by the kitchen hearth; another room housed a painfully shy maid named Claire. Would Esther mind sharing with her?
Briefly, Esther missed her closet at Hocquart’s; she was both unused to intimacy and fearful of giving away any of her secrets in an unguarded moment. But as soon as she met Claire her fears were allayed: the girl was so small that she took up almost no space and so timid that she made no demands. A wall-eyed orphan from Dieppe, Claire had made the trip to New France with her brother Philippe, both of them having signed three-year terms as indentured servants. Philippe, whom she idolized, had since moved to Trois-Rivières with his employer. Claire missed him dreadfully.
It took Esther nearly a week to get this much information out of her chamber-mate and it was another week before the poor girl got up the nerve to ask her anything in return. Claire asked shyly if the story she’d heard was true. Had Esther really been brought up by apes? Esther simply laughed, and replied that every tale was about its teller. Claire puzzled over this response for a few minutes before inquiring how Esther had learned to speak French, and wear clothes, and eat with a knife and fork, since animals did none of those things.
Esther could not bring herself to embroider her tales too elaborately for someone so innocent, so she told the girl that she had later been adopted by a woman, who treated her badly. Was no one kind to her? Claire asked, almost in tears. Yes, Esther hastened to assure her; one of the woman’s sons, a boy named Daniel, had been a good and loving friend. But he had gone away to sea and she had missed him so much that she had disguised herself as a boy in order to follow him to New France, the same way Claire had followed her own brother; however, it appeared Daniel was not here. So, again like Claire, Esther was all alone in the world.
From this moment on, Claire was as devoted to Esther as if they were flesh and blood. Nor was the friendship one-sided; there was plenty Esther could learn from a girl her own age who had been in New France two years longer than she had. The most important of these skills was skating, the favourite winter sport of the locals, at which Claire had become very adept. They were permitted to enjoy this activity every Sunday after church when the entire town turned out, gaily apparelled, upon the frozen river. Esther was dubious, but after Claire managed to procure an extra set of blades she was persuaded to go.
Against the cobalt sky, the river was a tumble of diamonds. It shone with an almost painful radiance, reflecting nothing, self-contained, cold-hearted and unknowable as the new land itself. Skaters moved across its surface tentatively at first, unsure of their footing, then with increasing confidence as the ice held firm under their weight. Spreading their arms wide for balance, scissoring their legs, they flew faster and faster, hooting with pleasure. Some formed long lines, “cracking the whip,” snapping off the unlucky person at the end of the queue across the ice. Couples danced to their own private music. Children fell, and howled, and picked themselves up, and fell again.
One tall plain nun maintained her dignity in this rowdy company, gliding along without apparent effort, her legs invisible under the voluminous folds of her habit. With her arms swinging back and forth in billowing sleeves, she resembled an enormous black and white bird, at once predatory and serene. Claire identified her as Mother Claude, superior of the Hôpital Général of Quebec. Compared to her, Esther was awkward as a fledgling newly tumbled from the nest. Her centre of gravity seemed displaced, her limbs dangled uselessly from her insubstantial spine, and each breath stabbed as though the air was lanced with tiny shards of glass. For the first time since she arrived in New France, Esther understood why people feared the cold. Her bones ached with the knowledge that the cold could kill her. It could kill her incidentally, without a backward glance, because her pounding heart and hot breath disturbed its silent architecture. Because blood was red and frost was white.
Still, she determined to make the most of this ephemeral freedom and pushed off vigorously from one foot to the other, trying to step and glide, step and glide, just as Claire instructed. Much to her chagrin, she found herself suddenly flat on her back, looking into Mother Claude’s amused face. She took the nun’s offered hand for support and heaved herself up. Mother Claude simply smiled, nodded, and skated away, spraying her with a froth of shaved ice in the process.
Esther tried skating for a few more minutes with Claire’s encouragement, but soon had to give up. Her feet were on fire. She hobbled to the edge of the river and sat down heavily on a rude bench of split timbers. With frost-stiffened fingers, she pulled off her skates, almost weeping from the pain in her toes. Who needed martyrdom when skating was available? How could people insist that this was fun? But around her the revelry continued, innocent and bright as the hand-knitted toques and mittens the children wore, the colourful blankets of the few Hurons observing them with amusement from the safety of the shore.
When they returned from this first outing, Esther told Madame Duplessis of her surprise at seeing a nun skating. She had always thought nuns too solemn and self-important to engage in frivolous amusements. Her employer replied that Mother Claude was so important that she could do whatever she wished. A daughter of the former governor of Montreal, the mother superior derived from a family of aristocratic soldiers from whom she had inherited her upright carriage and air of unshakeable authority. Like her sister Louise, who ran a successful lumbering operation, she was famous for her keen business sense. She was also renowned for her hospitality, lavishing banquets on all visiting nobles in the hopes of their patronage. No one who came to the city left without paying their respects to her; no one went away hungry or unimpressed. Not for the first time, Esther reflected that women had more independence in the New France than they did in the old, and could rise to higher positions of authority. She was glad her travels had ended here, and guardedly hopefu
l for her own prospects.
Over time, Esther grew more comfortable on skates, though she had plenty of bruises to testify to the hazards of the learning process. The prospect of an hour of freedom flying along the river made the tedium of sitting through Mass almost worthwhile. Hocquart had not compelled her to attend services with his household, but now she was required to pray two or three times a day in Madame Duplessis’s private chapel, as well as to attend Mass with her employer at Notre-Dame-de-laPaix every Sunday. She had been to the big cathedral before, with Marie-Thérèse, but on those occasions she had studied the congregation rather than paying attention to what the priest was saying. Now that she spent so many hours each day reading devotional literature, she was familiar with the liturgy and could mouth the Latin words with the other congregants, though little of it impressed her sceptical soul.
She was fascinated by Madame Duplessis’s favourite book, The Life of the Venerable Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, by her son Claude Martin, all seven hundred and fifty-seven pages of which she read aloud when not stopped by her employer to analyze and discuss parts of the text. Madame Duplessis nodded her head emphatically when Marie confessed her preference for the serenity of life in the monastery at Tours as compared to the “commotion” of family life. She told Esther how bitterly she herself had wept when compelled to give up her dream of the cloisters and how much, as a young wife and mother, she had missed having time to study, think, and pray; how she’d only recovered her former tranquillity of spirit in old age and widowhood.
For her part, Esther was moved to tears when she read, in one of Marie’s letters to her son, that her compulsion to abandon him in order to follow her religious vocation made her “the most cruel of all mothers.” And they were both transported by Marie’s observation in another letter that “We see nothing, we walk gropingly, and … ordinary things do not come about as they have been foreseen and advised. One falls and, just when one thinks oneself at the bottom of an abyss, one finds oneself on one’s feet.”
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