by Philip Roy
Chapter Seventeen
We squeezed into the hall, a whole regiment of sweaty soldiers, a couple dozen local settlers, their wives and children. The local priest said a prayer and blessed the King of France. Then he gave the floor to my father and asked everyone to listen to him closely. The crowd was in a good mood. The locals weren’t used to visitors, and as unsightly and smelly as we were, we seemed to make an impression upon them.
My father began by declaring that he knew the King personally and that the King had taken a special interest in the settlers of Acadia. This had a strong effect. “Vive le Roi!” they shouted. He then told them that we were at war with the English. There were gasps of surprise. This was because the English were planning to attack France and Acadia and destroy them, he said. My father paused to let this terrible thought find a home in their imaginations. French people everywhere were rallying to the defence of France and Acadia, he said.
There was a particularly determined group of English soldiers stationed at Annapolis Royal, said my father, who were preparing at this very moment to attack and annihilate all the local settlers of French origin and steal their land. Curses were heard throughout the room. My father paused. It is our Holy duty, he continued, to march against Annapolis Royal, defeat the wicked English and keep Acadia free and God-fearing. Join us, my father pleaded. Bring your muskets and pitchforks. Bring your fathers and your sons. Come with us to annihilate the English.
The hall shook with a roar of shouting. “Annihilate the English! Annihilate the English! Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!”
While I knew my father did not always tell the truth, I was surprised at the extent to which he lied to the audience gathered there. He said that England had declared war on France, when in fact it was the other way around. He said that he knew the King personally, which was completely untrue. And he said that the soldiers we were on our way to kill were particularly vicious, with no purpose other than to kill the settlers and take their land. Well, judging from the group we had taken prisoner from the little fort on the mainland, who had given up without much fight, I seriously doubted the viciousness of the garrison at Annapolis Royal.
All of the settlers agreed to join us. It was a unanimous display of patriotism. My father was moved to tears. He went around slapping the backs of fathers and sons and eagerly urged them to get a good night’s sleep so they would be prepared to leave the next morning. It was a week’s journey by foot. They could expect to return in little more than a fortnight. My father did reluctantly agree, however, after much coaxing, that a short bit of music and toasting wouldn’t be out of order. He went off to bed. The weight of a commanding officer’s conscience, he confessed, required adequate sleep. And so, amid cheers and salutes to the King and the coming assault on Annapolis Royal, my father and two more officers of the Compagnies franches de la Marine went to bed.
There was a moment of silence after they left the room. Then, as if out of nowhere there appeared half a dozen fiddles, spoons, drums and jugs of rum. Nothing in my life prepared me for what happened next.
One man started playing the fiddle. I recognized the music right away – an old French folk tune – but the rhythm was freer than I knew it. Another man joined in. Then a lady began to slap a pair of spoons against her knee. It was the funniest thing to look at, but when I shut my eyes, the clicking made a nice rhythm and actually sounded pretty good. The jugs of rum were passed around and one was shoved into my hands. I politely declined, but Louis, Charles and Pierre appeared, took the jug and held it over my head.
“Drink!” they ordered. “Or we’ll pour it on your head!”
I took a sniff at the bottle and winced.
“Drink!” yelled Charles.
I raised the bottle and took a drink. The liquid ran into my throat and burned all the way down into my stomach.
“Great stuff, eh?” said Charles, and he took a long drink and passed the jug on. Soon the room started to spin. The music got louder. People started dancing, singing and clapping. Everyone was smiling and laughing. We took off our jackets. The women removed their shawls. Everyone spread out against the sides and corners of the hall to create an open space in the middle where people could dance. And did they dance! They hopped and skipped and spun around and did somersaults on the floor! I was amazed at the wildness of the fiddle playing too. The fiddlers seemed to be making it up as they went along. It was simple but so full of energy I just couldn’t keep my feet still. And the rum heated us up until we were all red in the face and hot in the head. After a while I couldn’t stand it anymore; I had to either run out of the hall and get some fresh air or jump into the middle of the circle and join the craziness. To my own amazement, I found myself in the circle, jumping, clapping and swinging around foolishly like a clown. I saw the faces of men and women I didn’t know, and yet everyone seemed like my friend. We danced and jumped and kicked for hours. People grabbed me by the hands and swung me around and around and let me go, and then I was caught by the next person, who did the same. On and on it went, while I laughed myself silly.
Eventually the morning came – early and cruel. I felt the worst pain in my head and was sick to my stomach. If this was what the soldiers were experiencing on a regular basis I had more appreciation for their suffering. I promised myself I would never do it again. Many people had stayed up all night. Those of us who had slept at all did so right on the floor of the hall. My father came in and he was furious. I saw him open his mouth to yell, then catch himself. We were there, after all, to recruit the locals, not to upset them, and so he bit his tongue. But I could tell that he was boiling up inside.
It took about an hour to get us all together, on our feet and in some semblance of order. I felt absolutely awful from my head to my toes but especially in my head and stomach. I regretted everything about the night before and again vowed I would never do it again. My father made a quick count of us and came up one short.
“No matter,” he said, “whoever it is will show up soon enough. Let’s collect the new recruits and get on our way.”
Well, strangely enough, they could not be found. Everyone had gone home. My father split us up into several groups and sent us out to the farms of the settlers to ask the men to make good on their pledges from the night before. At every house we entered we encountered the same story – the men were very, very sorry but simply could not honour their pledge because of circumstances that had arisen unexpectedly. One settler’s horse had suddenly gone lame, another’s wife was about to give birth any day, another’s potatoes had to come in before the frost. They were all terribly sorry, but would we like to come in for a drink, perhaps?
By the late afternoon, not only had we not received a single new recruit, we were still one man short. That man, it turned out, was Pierre. That didn’t surprise me. I vaguely remembered seeing him take a fancy to a particular girl on the dance floor the night before.
As evening settled, my father was in such a fit of rage I thought he would burst or even shoot somebody.
“Should we prepare to bed down in the hall again tonight, sir?” asked one of the soldiers.
“No!” screamed my father. “We leave now! We’ll camp in the woods!”
I confess I felt a little bit sorry for him then. It was hard not to. He was filled with so much determination and was trying so hard to do his duty. But his determination went against the grain of almost everyone else on the expedition. His duty included killing people, and that was insane to me. I still could not believe we were travelling to Annapolis Royal to do that.
Watching my father was a little bit like watching a spoiled child who got excited when things went his way but threw a tantrum when they didn’t. For the first half of the summer things had gone his way. Now, on this ridiculous expedition to Annapolis Royal, they weren’t.
Chapter Eighteen
The warmth of summer faded like a fire going out. It became we
t, windy and cold. The troughs that cut through the swamp lost what little dryness they had gained over the summer and became shallow streams of water and mud. But inside Two-feathers’ tunnels he was able to stay mostly dry. This was the muskrat world – damp, slippery passages of mud between dens, and a dark, recessed cave in which to dry out.
The wet mud was a challenge for Two-feathers, especially as the weather turned colder. In fact, this combination of wetness, cold and wind was a scourge to all furless creatures. In some ways the winter was easier because, though it was colder, it was drier as a rule, and the ground was frozen. Autumn in the swamp, with its incessant rain, was a miserable time.
But Two-feathers had created a refuge of dryness, and he thanked the muskrat spirit many times for showing him how to live in the swamp properly. The tunnel floors, which would have become impassably slippery with the water he carried in himself, he lined with branches and birch bark. Inside each entrance he kept sticks for scraping off the mud that collected on his arms and legs.
Fire making became much more difficult in the rain and rising troughs. He reserved one den just for this purpose. It was intentionally unconnected to the tunnel system so that, should it ever be discovered, it would not lead his enemies anywhere. At the opening of this den he constructed an elaborate fire and canopy system made out of logs, stones, boughs and bark. The fires were built on an elevated platform, above the running water but below the swamp surface, and the smoke rose and spread out thinly, so as not to be seen from the distance. He only lit fires at night, when the smoke would be invisible.
In the flickering light of a late-night fire, while the rain beat down outside, Two-feathers sat comfortably in his fire-den entrance and began to fashion two necklaces from the bear’s claws. The one with the largest claws he made for himself. The smaller one he made for the girl of the rainbow. He didn’t intend to visit her until his wounds had healed more. His chest looked like the troughs that cut through the swamp, and he didn’t want to frighten her.
Cutting thin strips of leather from the bear’s skin he punctured holes in the claws with the point of a sharpened stone, smoothed them by rubbing them with soft stone, then fitted the leather through. In between he added coloured stones that he had been collecting for years. When they were done, the necklaces would sing the bear’s praises, telling of its courage and generosity. And they would be beautiful.
He also wanted to wait because he was sore and feared that the strenuous work of climbing in and around the bluecoats’ village would open his wounds again. So for several more days he sat and rested comfortably in his den, fashioning the necklaces and sewing his winter coat and leggings while the rain came down and the wind blew in from the sea.
The day he decided to see her he went for a swim in the ocean. The water was very cold but good for his wounds, and he wanted to wash the smell of mud from his body. He washed his hair, cleaned his nails, filed them with a stone, and rubbed the spruce gum from his hands. Smelling like the woods, not the swamp, he hung both necklaces around his neck and went to see her.
Getting inside the leader’s house was easier than before. The guards had loosened their attention and become less careful. Two-feathers felt a change in the energy of the village, though he didn’t know why. It was mid autumn; the air was colder, the days shorter. But it wasn’t that. Many soldiers were away. They had left on the ship that must also have carried his father. But it wasn’t that either. As he watched the guard leave his post at the leader’s door – it was guarded by only one soldier now – and move quickly to meet his relief and gobble up a piece of bread handed to him, Two-feathers realized what it was. The soldiers were hungry. The village was hungry. The season of plenty had passed and they were not prepared for the winter. He thought of all the redcoats being kept prisoner, who needed to be fed; it wasn’t hard to understand why there was a shortage of food. To run out so early in the season meant the winter would be very harsh indeed. Many people would die, especially the young and the old. And while this was nature’s way – it held no favourites – he had expected the bluecoats to know better and be better prepared. He already considered the size of their village foolish. The spirits would never bless such a gathering of people in one area for so long. The animals, trees and plants would disappear, as indeed they had. Why didn’t the bluecoats know this? They should have known this. He questioned their ability to survive in this land. While they appeared to try hard in some ways, they did not appear to have the wisdom required for survival here.
He went upstairs and passed the snoring leader. The rooms were so big and empty and it amazed him to see them again. He picked up the scent of flowers in the air and knew the girl of the rainbow was there. He entered the room where he had found her before and there she was, curled up in bed. Again she reminded him of his mother. Her hair lay across her shoulders as she slept. He liked her hair down. It looked more natural to him. He spotted the blue stone around her neck. She was wearing it. That pleased him. He was glad he had given it to her. Her face in sleep was a child’s face, so different from how it was when she was awake, and he wondered if she had been forced to grow up too quickly, as many children were, as he had been. And yet, though she was about the same age as him, there was something about her that seemed older too, something that showed only when she was awake. She carried a wisdom that was foreign to him. He didn’t know what it was but suspected maybe it was natural only to women. He believed his mother would have had it. He admired it.
He didn’t want to wake her but didn’t want to hurry away either. Gently, he sat on the bed and watched her sleep. Her face twisted into a frown suddenly, then relaxed. Her brow would furrow, then spread evenly again. Her sleep was filled with dreams, difficult ones. And then, she woke. She sat up quickly, saw him and was startled. Her forehead showed her anxiety. But as the dream trailed away, her face softened, she beamed and threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. He was startled too and didn’t know what to do. Her squeeze pressed his wounds and he winced. She pulled back, alarmed, staring questioningly into his eyes. He smiled to reassure her. She saw the bear-claw necklaces around his neck and her eyes opened wider. Touching them, she questioned him again with her eyes. He raised the smaller one over his head and gave it to her. She took it gracefully then raised the blue pendant in her hand to show him she was wearing it. She held it over her heart and smiled. Then she got up from the bed, went to her armoire and pulled a large wool frock from it. She carried it over and handed it to him.
“I made this for you,” she said. “It’s for the winter.”
It was the first time she had spoken to him. Two-feathers smiled and held up the heavy wool top. He stared at it and pinched the sheep’s wool between his fingers with fascination. She had dyed the wool a smoky grey, a perfect colour for coming and going at night. Gently, she raised his arms and fitted the garment over him. Her face brightened into a smile of deep satisfaction. It was a good fit. Two-feathers stood up and felt the warmth of the tunic. He was very pleased; it was a wonderful present. He felt honoured that she had taken the time to make such a gift for him. With gestures he asked if she had enough to eat. She tilted her head to one side – sort of. He gestured that he would hunt and bring her food. Would she like that? She smiled. He was pleased. He sensed what she really meant was that she would like to see him again.
Carefully, Two-feathers slipped out of the house before the sun. He returned to the swamp with something heavy on his mind. He wondered if his mother would have approved of this girl. He wished he could have asked her. Surely she would have, such a beautiful girl, so skilled with her hands, so expressive with her voice and her eyes. And yet, she was from a distant land and a distant people, as was his father. How he wished he could have asked her. It was also a matter of respect, a respect he wished to show his mother right now at this important time in his life, when there was no longer just one woman in his heart.
Chapter Nineteen
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br /> The English knew we were coming long before we arrived. That was no surprise to me. We couldn’t attack anyway. We had picked up only a dozen settlers along our way, to my father’s profound disappointment. Our allies, however, the Mi’kmaq, came out in force, more than doubling our strength. I was amazed to see such a display of strong, able warriors. They looked very noble indeed and didn’t strike me as savage at all, at least not in the wilds of the New World, where they fitted in just like the deer and fox. A Mi’kmaq warrior on the streets of Paris would look savage, no doubt. On the other hand, a Parisian merchant would look ridiculous over here.
The largest part of our force was yet to come in ships from Louisbourg, with soldiers, cannon and supplies. Without those ships we would have made a pathetic spectacle storming the fortress, which the English had reinforced in anticipation of our surprise attack. So we pitched camp up shore and waited for the ships that were due at any moment.
The wait turned into days, and the days, painfully, into weeks, but no ships ever came. I think our allies, the Mi’kmaq, lost respect for us then. We were too weak to make a proper attack. At one point, in a desperate effort, we gathered together and stood on a hill in full sight of the English, just to let them know we were there or, as my father unrealistically hoped, to intimidate them into surrendering. I think that intimidation lasted for about half an hour, after which, when they realized we were not actually attacking them, they stopped taking us seriously and taunted and insulted us from the walls of their fort. The idea that our enemy would not take us seriously seemed to humiliate my father and drive him to despair. I’m sure he would have preferred to attack anyway. But we would have lost badly. Without reinforcements, supplies and artillery, we were forced to retreat with our tails between our legs. I had never seen a man so dejected as my father then became. I couldn’t help but feel sorry him. But every time I did, I remembered him throwing my violoncello into the sea and my sympathy was short-lived. It was a long, wet walk back across the peninsula to our ship, and a very sour sail back to the great fortress of Louisbourg.