by Philip Roy
Blood Brothers
in Louisbourg
by Philip Roy
For Don
Copyright © 2012 Philip Roy
This book is a work of fiction. The characters and events depicted are products of the author’s imagination.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Cape Breton University Press recognizes fair dealing exceptions under Access Copyright. Responsibility for the opinions, research and the permissions obtained for this publication rest with the author.
Cape Breton University Press recognizes the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Block Grant program, and the Province of Nova Scotia, through the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, for our publishing program. We are pleased to work in partnership with these bodies to develop and promote our cultural resources.
Cover design by Cathy MacLean Design, Pleasant Bay, NS
Layout by Mike Hunter, Port Hawkesbury and Sydney, NS.
eBook development by Wild Element www.wildelement.ca
First printed in Canada
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Roy, Philip, 1960-
Blood brothers in Louisbourg : a novel / Philip Roy.
ISBN 978-1-897009-72-7
I. Title.
PS8635.O91144B56 2012----C813'.6----C2012-903185-2
Cape Breton University Press
P.O. Box 5300
Sydney, Nova Scotia B1P 6L2 CA
www.cbupress.ca
Blood Brothers
in Louisbourg
by Philip Roy
Cape Breton University Press
Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada
I met a ghost once. Well, he wasn’t really a ghost, he was a warrior who could fly over walls like a bird and run under the ground like a rat and never make a sound. I saw him only a dozen times or so when he didn’t even know I was there. We never spoke. I suppose he did try to kill me. He thought I was his enemy. I admired him anyway.
Chapter One
My father served the King, Louis XV. He was a captain and military engineer in the Compagnies franches de la Marine. He sailed on the King’s ships and wore the King’s uniform and liked to joke that he sat on the King’s pot. But he never actually met the King. He built His fortresses, carried His pistol and wore His insignia close to his heart but never once set eyes upon Him. I couldn’t understand how he could be so devoted to a person he’d never met.
One day in my fifteenth year my father had me accompany him in his carriage to Paris, where he would receive new orders. It was a snowy day; the horses were slipping on the road. My father was in a good mood. The King had just declared war on the English. This, he said, was great news. The King would almost certainly send him back to the great Fortress of Louisbourg, where the fortifications, which he had helped design and build, would need reinforcing.
“And if I go, Jacques, then you will come with me.”
I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t.
“What would I do there?”
“Wear a uniform, carry a musket and defend the King! At Louisbourg, Jacques, you will become a man.”
I stared out the carriage window. The wind spun the snow into spirals. I was not close to my father. He was a stranger when I was growing up because he was always away. My earliest memory of him was when my mother put me on his knee and he picked me up, shook me and laughed. He smelled strange. He sounded strange. I was frightened and I cried. He was never home for more than a few months at a time and never paid much attention to me when he was. Now, suddenly, he was taking an interest in me.
My father loved uniforms, weapons, military strategy and anything to do with killing the enemy efficiently. He spoke of the efficiency of killing soldiers the same way he spoke of the efficiency of bridges, roads or fortifications. He loved building things and he loved war. He said the greatest glory a man could achieve was to distinguish himself in battle, especially to die in battle.
I really didn’t understand. I understood his fascination with building things, such as roads and bridges and walls, but where was the glory in killing people? Or dying? That didn’t make any sense to me at all. I loved learning about new things, especially scientific inventions such as the diving bell, the steam engine and the pianoforte, and music and books. Weapons were interesting too – how they were constructed and how they worked – but it bothered me that they were used to kill people. When I was little, I saw a man crushed beneath a carriage. He fell down in the street and the wheels rolled over him and killed him. I learned then that the body was not made to stand up to wood and metal. Even the strongest man’s body could be broken with a block of wood. When I thought of people creating mechanical inventions to rip apart the flesh and bones of other people, I felt horrified inside. But that was a secret I kept to myself. I didn’t want anyone to think I was afraid.
At fifteen I had already exceeded my father’s expectations for education. No one needed that much book learning, he said. Now was the time to concentrate on the manly arts: swordsmanship, wrestling and musketry. I shut my eyes when he said that. I hated wrestling, was hopeless with a sword and couldn’t fire a musket to save my life. Other boys my age had fathers or older brothers around to show them those things. I didn’t. Not to worry, said my father. There was still time to learn. At Louisbourg I would learn everything I needed to know to become a man. As the carriage entered the city gates I made an attempt to discuss Voltaire, my favourite writer, in the hope of showing my father that my talents lay elsewhere. Voltaire was a visionary. He wanted to make things better for France, not just for the King. The future was in the brandishing of new ideas, not swords and muskets. “Voltaire has a new way of …”
“Voltaire?! Voltaire is a criminal!” my father shouted. “That is why he was thrown in the Bastille. He wrote against the King. He should have been shot for that! No, you need to study the manly arts now, Jacques. You have read enough books.”
I felt desperate. “Will I be able to bring my violoncello?”
He smiled, but it wasn’t genuine. “Sure. Why not? Bring anything you like, though I doubt you will feel much like playing it there. The Fortress of Louisbourg is the greatest defence system in the New World, Jacques. Just wait until you see it. You will be so impressed. And with all our military preparations, I think you will find little time for music.”
As the snow thickened on the branches outside, I tried to imagine raising a heavy musket to my shoulder, aiming and firing at an enemy soldier. He would have a look of horror on his face. He would fall to his knees, drop forward onto the ground and his blood would drip into the soil. Then, someone else would shoot me and I would fall. I would bleed to death too. I hadn’t even reached my sixteenth birthday. Would my father see glory in that? That was insane. War was insane. All the great philosophers had said so. But my father hadn’t read them.
As for the New World, why should I care about a place so far away? Wasn’t it just filled with savages? I wouldn’t go. And if my father forced me to, I would hate him forever.
—
My mother was upset at the thought of losing me, but would not go against my father’s wishes. I could see it in her eyes, behind her tears. I didn’t blame her for that. That was the way of our society. We sat down for tea the next morning. “I will bring my violoncello, Mama,” I said.
She looked troubled.
/> “What? What is it?”
“Jacques, your father has decided your violoncello will stay behind.”
“No, no. He clearly said I could bring it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think he meant it.”
My mind raced. I thought of running away. I had cousins in Provence. But they would not take me in if I went against my father’s will. “Are you sure, Mama? He clearly said I could take whatever I liked.”
“I believe he will tell you there is space for one chest only. Can you fit your violoncello in one chest?”
“Perhaps, if I remove the neck and bridge. And I pack my things around it.”
“Jacques …” She took my hands. “Your father has it firmly in his mind that you will come back from the New World a grown man. That you will join him in the Compagnies franches de la Marine.”
“And build fortresses?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “Mama, I will write to you every day and make certain the letters are sent with each sailing ship.”
My mother’s tears fell hard. How I hated to see her cry. “I know, my son. I will write you as well.” She forced herself to smile. “And perhaps you will find the pendant I gave to your father on his first voyage there. It is a turquoise oval cut with a woman’s face. Look, it matches this ring. See how lovely it is? My grandmother gave it to me when I was a little girl. It was my favourite possession.”
“If it is there, Mama, I will find it.”
—
I packed my violoncello. I took it secretly to the instrument maker’s where they separated the neck from the body and gave me glue for reattaching it. I wrapped my clothes around it and just managed to squeeze the body inside the chest. I wrapped the neck, bridge and bow, rolled up the strings and packed them all separately. This left little space for anything else so I chose my books carefully and took only what clothing I couldn’t live without. I was hardly expecting to frequent high society in the rustic Fortress of Louisbourg.
Chapter Two
Two-feathers woke in freshly fallen snow. He raised the spruce boughs that had kept him warm and listened to the silence. He had been woken by the squeal of a rabbit caught in a snare he had set the night before. Moving quietly through the snow, he grabbed the animal, freed it from the snare and held it firmly against his stomach. Petting its soft ears and whispering words of apology and gratitude, he deftly slit its throat and held on as it released its life to him.
In the pit where he had slept he built a fire, skinned the rabbit and sat roasting it. The wind twisted softly through the trees carrying the earliest scent of spring. Two-feathers breathed deeply and smiled. He had survived the harshest winter. He was not so far from the sea now, where the bluecoats had constructed their great village. It was legendary among his people, a village that had consumed the forest for half a day’s walk in every direction, with weapons that blew stones the weight of a man out to sea, and a harbour of giant canoes that carried warriors beyond the sea and sky. Two-feathers was keen to see it all for himself, though that was not why he had come.
He tied his deerskin clothes tightly at the wrists and ankles to trap his body’s heat, picked up his bow and pack and followed the frozen river. Soon the rivers would break apart and flow freely to the sea, and they would run thick with salmon. In the shadows of morning he heard the snap of a branch and turned – there, at the river’s edge, a young doe was drinking; one he had seen the day before. She dropped her head in solitude; she did not know he was there. Two-feathers quickly fitted an arrow to his bow. The shot was clear, but he hesitated. He could not take the life of a deer for just one meal. Pursing his lips he whistled, and the startled deer fled like the wind. In its escape it roused a partridge. Two-feathers quickly aimed, and the bird gave itself in the doe’s place.
As he hung the partridge from his pack, he wondered if the doe had come as a sign from the spirit of his mother, Running-deer. Perhaps she had come to guide him, or warn him, or maybe even to apologize for having left him. Many years before, he was told by his chief, she had travelled with a trading party to the bluecoats’ village, where she fell in love with a young bluecoat warrior. The bluecoats sometimes took wives from his people for companionship as well as for advantage in the fur trade. But the young warrior who had won Running-deer’s affection did not want to keep her; after two seasons he returned to his own land, and she to her people, the Mi’kmaq, where she gave birth to Two-feathers, so named because the blood of two peoples flowed through his veins.
Three years later, Running-deer left once more to try to reunite with Two-feathers’ father, who had returned but was now married in his own land. Despairingly, she threw herself at a man who had closed his heart and would not see her. Alone and distraught, she ran from the fortress in the dead of winter. That was the story as Two-feathers had received it. No one knew what had happened to her after that, whether she met with wild animals, succumbed to the cold or simply died of a broken heart. She was never seen again.
Two-feathers was raised by the Mi’kmaq. He became the brightest young warrior of his tribe. The role of warrior came to him as naturally as flight to a bird, and he loved it with every part of his being. And yet, even as a boy he sensed that, since his father could not be counted among the Mi’kmaq, it was even more important that he become stronger, faster, more skilled and more aware than his companions. And he did. He excelled in hunting, fishing, scouting and trapping. He could make fires when the rain would not end and keep warm in the deepest cold. Still, he was never able to forget that his father was not one of them. He liked to believe that his father was a noble warrior among his own people, but a nagging doubt haunted him. What noble warrior would put the mother of his child out in the cold? Now, almost a man himself, Two-feathers needed to find out.
—
The woods were full of spirits. Two-feathers felt them around him in the day and night. Sometimes they took the form of animals, their favourite, and sometimes trees or plants. Usually they were peaceful and helpful, but occasionally they were angry and he had to be careful when crossing a river, or climbing a rock face or hunting a bear. This he had learned the hard way, having once brought down a young bear with his bow and arrow. As he approached, the bear suddenly leapt to its feet and clawed at his leg, cutting a deep wound. Two-feathers retaliated by stabbing the bear with his knife until it was dead. Now he carried a scar that reminded him that the spirits kept their own council and could change their minds without warning.
The woods were also frequented by trappers and soldiers: bluecoats, who were friendly; and redcoats, who were not. Two-feathers came upon parties of each but went out of his way to avoid them. They were strong, capable men, these white-skinned warriors, but they carried strange and dangerous sickness. They salted their food until it tasted like seawater, and drank a poisonous drink that made them laugh, sing and dance until they fell down, but clouded their senses so that they could not shoot straight, nor walk straight, nor even stand up if they drank too much of it. To the Mi’kmaq this poison was particularly dangerous. Two-feathers was told many times by his chief and the warriors who trained him that he must never drink it or, once he started, he would never be able to stop. And then, though he would laugh, sing and dance, his arrows would no longer hit their targets and he would wake in the morning with pain and thunder in his head. And so he promised himself, as he promised his elders, that he would never drink the poison of the pale-skinned warriors from a faraway land, even though his father was one of them.
He could always smell, hear and see the soldiers long before they would know he was there. They travelled noisily and heavily, wrapped in so many furs they could not run nor even walk quickly through the deep snow. They stopped often and ate for three men each. But he did like their music, which they played at night when they made camp. He would sometimes camp not far away just to listen, though they would not know h
e was there.
Two-feathers’ greatest skill was moving through the woods with invisibility. This he had learned from his teachers, but also from the animal spirits. To carry invisibility you had to first believe that you were. Then, you could cross the snow-covered river leaving no tracks because you had no weight. You could pass through the woods in silence because you made no sound. You could slip between trees unseen because you had no shape and cast no shadow. Only then, when you felt this way, could you move amongst strangers without them seeing you.
In the afternoon he heard them – soldiers – passing through the woods with a noise like falling trees. Turning into the wind, he closed his eyes and raised his nose. Their scent was strong. There were at least half a dozen of them. He wondered why they had come so far inland where there were no trading parties and few furs. And then he saw them. Redcoats! But this was land held by the bluecoats, with the help of the Mi’kmaq. Why would a party of redcoats travel so far north? Was this a scouting party? Were the redcoats preparing an attack? Two-feathers didn’t care for either group of warriors, but since his people were allied with the bluecoats he felt a responsibility to find out why the redcoats were here. And so he followed them. As it turned out, they were headed in the same direction – towards the bluecoats’ great village.
Chapter Three
We sailed from St. Malo in the northwest, on the 27th of March. Ships from St. Malo sailed all over the world. It was a three-day journey by coach to get there. I travelled alone; my father followed later with his regiment. That was a good thing. Three days in a stuffy coach was bad enough, but if I had to listen to him rage against the English all the way I would have gone insane. He would have supported a war against the Austrians or the Persians or the Mongolians, if the King had declared one. War was war to a man who believed in war. However, opinions about the war actually varied quite a bit in France as I learned during the coach ride.