He remembered his first view of the immense, fur-bearing region, of standing beside the little Jesuit turned soldier on a cliff towering seven hundred feet above the Clearwater River and looking out with awe over dense evergreen forests that stretched as far as the eye could see.
After his father’s death—after he had performed the coup de mort—he had sought out Jean-Baptiste and returned to that vast wilderness to harvest pelts. They had been accompanied only by a few members of the Inuit, or Eskimo, bands.
Peaceful scenes of polar bears rambling across the frozen wastelands and glistening towers of floating ice that looked like the French castles Jean-Baptiste described had not diluted the bitterness inside the boy-man. The bitterness took its toll of him, and his body grew thinner by the day.
In the midst of a raging winter storm, the worried old Jesuit had hustled him back to Montréal, back to Mother Marie’s keeping, by means of a sled drawn by native dogs with belled harnesses that had rung incessantly in his ears.
Between the old man and the nun, they nursed him back to health. Against his stubborn will, they gently prepared him over the next five years for life in an Anglo-controlled society. With their deaths, scarcely a year apart, he had returned to his mother’s tribe, the Chipewyans. But he discovered that he was no longer one of them, nor was he French.
Where did he belong?
For teachers, he had had two nonconformists—a priest turned soldier and a passionate nun. Each time he returned to Montréal, he missed his mentors and their abiding love more than he could bear to acknowledge.
Now he was returning to Montréal at one of its most picturesque times, the Fur Fair, an event carried over from medieval days. In all European countries, the cities and towns set aside two weeks when merchants from all parts brought their goods with them and set up booths wherever they could find space. Dancers, jugglers, magicians, and mummers followed in the wake of the merchants and entertained in the streets for the largesse of pennies.
The Montréal fair was conducted on the same principle. Indians, painted and feathered, came down the Ottawa in one huge flotilla, sometimes as many as four or five hundred canoes at once. On the outskirts of town, they pitched their tepees and set up their kettles, with much shouting and singing and quarreling. All who witnessed the spectacle agreed that it was at once exciting and slightly terrifying.
In the meantime, Montréal took on a gala air. Merchants from all parts of New France brought their goods to barter and occupied temporary booths.
Nicolas strolled through the rout and rabble, the commanding height of his leonine head visible above the others. At his side trotted Loupe, a fierce, furred running dog of the Eskimos that was part timber wolf.
About him streamed Indians, inebriated with the white man’s firewater, brandishing tomahawks and screeching their wildest woodland notes. Some of the coureurs des bois were no less exhibitionist, stripping off their clothes and parading half naked through the town.
The coureurs des bois were easy to distinguish from the French habitants. For one, their colorful and gaudy homespuns betrayed them. Another sign was the birchbark cases containing a knife for eating that some wore around their necks. Also, there were the pikes, or sacks, slung on the small of their backs along with the beltlike leather tumpline that looped their foreheads.
The woodsmen’s most obvious giveaway, however, was their lack of facial hair. The Indians with whom they traded found the curly hair of the French grotesque and their beards and moustaches nothing short of loathsome. Indeed, they were surprised at the roughness of European skins, their own being soft and delicate as a result of the constant application of oil and grease.
The coureurs des bois had gained a reputation for courage and élan, a reputation as a gay, devil-may-care lot lacking in fear. These wood runners were a wild lot with paddle in hand, pack at their feet, and a song on their lips. They were inured to waterways, where the bateau and pirogue were the sole means of transportation, and the trackless forests where the northern lights danced like marionettes. Known for their capacity to adapt themselves to any environment, they were true sons of the wilderness.
Nicolas strode among them, one of them, yet apart from them. His twisted ankle had eventually straightened, and for the most part he had lost the tongue-tied feeling he had so often experienced in the presence of his father and other white men.
Without even so much as a glance, he bypassed the large storehouses of the successful Fur Company of Canada, du Plessis holdings. At the door of the two-story Café Le Roi, he commanded Loupe to wait and entered the crowded tavern to search out his erstwhile partner.
He found François de Gautier in a narrow little room above. The usually elegant man was sprawled ignominiously beneath the apothecary’s dark-haired daughter, whose naked buttocks wriggled and bounced above him. Sensing another presence, François sent the girl sprawling and sprang upright. “What the—? A pox upon you, Nicolas! Are you so uncivilized a savage that you can’t even knock?”
An amused grin passed over Nicolas’s face. The girl grabbed up her clothing before her, flashing him an apprehensive glance as she scooted past him for the door.
François burst into raucous laughter. “The wenches flee at the sight of your handsome face, Nicolas.” He reached for the brandy bottle on the floor beside the bed. “If the donzelles would only stop and listen, your voice would seduce them on the spot.”
“And I thought it was my prowess between the sheets that lured them like the Lorelei.”
“Mais, oui!” François swilled a drink and shook his head. “You know, after three years, I’m still amazed by you. A fierce coureur des bois quoting Locke and Cicero, learned at both ancient and modern languages—why, you even outshine me at mathematics and engineering.”
Nicolas peeled away from the door and crossed to a ladder-backed chair. He turned it around to straddle it backward. “If you would forget the wine and the women . . .”
With elaborate affectation, François preened his luxurious, reddish brown moustache. “It’s the women who cannot forget me. After all, a handsome lord—”
“A lord without a castle,” Nicolas said, smiling at his friend’s boasting, though what François said about women was true. The dashing nobleman was a true son of Gascony, the natives of which were prone to be very sure of themselves and not above gasconade, the vainglorious talk named after them.
“Acch! Must you remind me? You are looking at a gentleman caught in a pigsty of a village.” François took another swig and tossed the empty bottle toward where his discarded clothing lay heaped. The bottle joined a collection of two others. He could drink any man under the table and still keep his head. “You’re two days late.”
Nicolas shrugged indifferently and said, “I don’t like this latest idea of yours.”
François sat at the edge of the bed, his hands braced on his knees, his heavy genitals dangling. “But you will parlay with this New Englander, Nicolas?”
He stood and swung away from the chair. “Oui. But I warn you I have no interest in a permanent venture with the English. Invite them into Canada, and they will be no less a despot than your own government.”
“France is your government, too, I might remind you.” François rose and began to dress. The silk stockings he rolled up over hair-matted legs were of the best quality, though slightly threadbare.
“No, François,” Nicolas said flatly. “I belong to no nation. I will not be subjugated.”
The parlay was to be held deep in the woods beyond the immense pasture, La Commune, where the coureurs des bois engaged in a rugged Indian game played with long sticks curved at the end to contain a webbing of catgut. The object of the contest was to keep possession of a ball. The French had coined the name of La Crosse for it.
François and Nicolas, with Loupe at his heels, moved among the people who had turned out to watch the woodsmen demonstrate their speed and agility. New France’s air was so clear and healthy that the men attained great s
trength. Few children died in the cradle as they did in the mother country. The men born in the colony were of a new race: French-Canadians. They grew straight and tall and strong, with broader shoulders and arms hard from unceasing swing of ax and dipping of paddle. Even their voices had changed, the soft accent of the French provinces giving place to deeper, clearer notes that carried a musical ring over long stretches of water and through dense forests.
However robust and courageous the coureurs des bois might be, it was upon the rakish François de Gautier that the young women of Montréal cast languishing, coquettish glances. Though only of medium height, and with his curly brown hair receding slightly in a U shape above each temple, he possessed an inordinate amount of good looks that created an enticing diablerie of expression.
He appeared dashing in a coat of rich gray levantine cloth that matched the fine gray leather of his buckled shoes. Tucked under his arm, he carried a tapboard hat with the brim turned up to show off the scarlet silk lining, more than likely Marchesseau silk.
Regardless of François’s circumstances, he would not permit himself to dress and act less than the gentleman he had been born. He had only to look around and see the French-born who, through careless habits, had let themselves degenerate into scum such as those found in sordid seaports like Marseilles.
His father had been chancellor to the minister of the marine, the Comte de Pontchartrain. The family wealth did not cover the youngest son’s lust for life’s pleasures, so François was put into the navy to seek his own fortunes. Like Nicolas, he did not enjoy being subject to the orders or whims of a superior.
Perhaps that was why he was drawn to the erudite half-breed, whom he had met in Acadia, which the English, who now controlled the French province, called New Scotland. Having surrendered his captain’s commission, François had just arrived on a ship out of Le Havre and was looking around at Nova Scotia’s pathetic little fort of Port Royal. The prospects of acquiring a fortune there looked nil.
Then his attention had been caught by Nicolas Brissac. How could it not have been? He was taller than the rest, savage-looking with a swarthy face. He was dressed like an Indian, his powerful torso bared to the waist, from which dangled a tomahawk, and he was tanned as brown as a walnut. A leather tumpline looped about his forehead held back the black, shoulder-length hair. As he walked along the wharf, he was trailed by a sled dog equally as fierce-looking.
A gabby barmaid at the local tavern had told François that the man was a half-breed engaged in the extremely lucrative business of fur trapping. At that, the ears of the enterprising François de Gautier had perked up. Why not? he had asked himself. Why not go into the fur business on his own?
Of course he had realized there was a major drawback. The best furs were deep in French territory, the northwest territory— and only a native of New France, a true coureur des bois, could make such a venture successful.
Most certainly, François had no knowledge of the woods or of trapping. What he did have was contacts with English sea captains willing to risk smuggling the French furs.
However, finding a partner was a little more difficult. First, those self-reliant men born and bred in Canada had little liking for the French-born. Second, many of the coureurs des bois were wild and dissolute and threw their profits away in drunken carousing in the towns. Drinking was fine, but throwing away profits—mais non!
By coincidence, the formidable Nicolas Brissac was exactly the kind of partner he was seeking. First, the man set himself apart from the Canadien Clique. Second, discreet inquiry revealed the man did not drink anything stronger than table wine. Thus armed, François had approached him and offered his services in exchange for twenty-five percent of the profits.
Brissac had refused. François had offered him a larger percentage. The half-breed had refused him again. François had been close to despair. A fortune lay at his fingertips, if he could but convince the fur trapper.
Surprisingly, it was François’s engaging personality that finally elicited a laconic agreement from Brissac. Faced with what appeared to be an end to the negotiations, François had desultorily talked of other things while he drank.
He had been amazed when the coureur des bois, who was about the same age as he, had responded with a knowledgeable debate on the theory of the nobility of the savage. Brissac had quietly argued against the position with astounding eloquence. François, holding his own on behalf of the Indians he knew so little about, had declared that primitive man was nobler and more sensitive than the highly civilized products of European society.
“How can you proclaim the Indian a savage,” François had asked, out of patience, “when you yourself are an Indian and educated better than most Europeans?”
Beneath the high, prominent cheekbones, a dry smile had curved Nicolas’s lean lips. “Mon ami, you do not know of the savagery I am capable of.”
From there the conversation had covered the arts, politics, religion. By that time, François was no longer astonished to find that Nicolas Brissac could conjugate Latin and Greek verbs and had translated Cicero and Horace before he was fifteen.
Somehow, the partnership had been reached without François being quite certain of the terms. He was certain that, as partners, they would complement one another. His own temperament was mercurial, his enthusiasm boundless; Nicolas was more contained, dispassionate, and without the need to succeed that so plagued himself, the need to establish his own seigneury like the one he had surrendered to his older brother.
François arranged for the rendezvous with the New England sea captain to take place at the dilapidated sawmill of a drunken half-breed, old Vincente. The sawmill’s shack perched wobbily on the bank of St. Martin’s Brook and looked as if it might slide into the rushing water at any minute.
Long, curling, fragrant-smelling pine shavings scented the clearing before the shack. Nicolas halted midway across the clearing. “What is it?” François asked.
Nicolas, his gaze swinging in an arc about them, stroked the fur that bristled along Loupe’s neck. “Vincente has had recent visitors,” he said at last.
“A war party?” François trusted Nicolas’s instinct. The coureur des bois wrought havoc around the Iroquois villages, and they feared him. A certain story was told around Montréal and Trois Rivieres that, in hopes of his capture, the old women of the Long House gathered faggots to burn Nicolas Brissac at the stake.
Nicolas shook his head. “No. The tracks are made by wooden shoes, not moccasins.”
François’s hand eased away from the Italian stiletto tucked beneath his coat. “Perhaps some of the New England contacts.”
Once again, Nicolas shook his head. Just then the shack door creaked open, but it wasn’t old Vincente who stepped into view but a squat, tonsured priest wearing the brown, hooded cassock of the Recollect order.
François’s heart sank. It was the provincial of the powerful Society of Jesus, Pierre Tournaire. The Jesuits, through their control of the Indian neophytes, were said to be attempting to assert a monopoly on the fur trade. No one could prove it, but their papal ensign was as common a sight in Canada as the fleur-de-lis. Their influence reached not only to France but to Rome as well.
François feigned congeniality. “Reverend father, you are far from your mission. Seeking a convert in old Vincente, are you?”
The father fingered the three knots on his belt cord that symbolized his three vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. In the sweat-beaded face, his eyes were brilliant. A sad smile of resignation found its way to his small mouth. “Alas, no, my son. I am here to point out traitors to France.”
He made the sign of the cross in the air, and with that three crimson-coated soldiers spilled out of the shack doorway. The bell mouths of three muskets were trained on Nicolas and François.
“I happen to know you are in league with the English captain,” the priest continued with a self-satisfied smile. “Your furs have been impounded, Nicolas Brissac, and I’m afraid I must ask the tw
o of you to accompany the soldiers.”
François shivered. In an instant, his mind’s eye saw images of a metal boot tightened by screws and a rack that was turned until the victim’s joints were pulled asunder.
In that same instant, Nicolas’s tomahawk hurtled across the intervening space. With a soft thud, it caught one of the soldiers between the eyes. Even before the guard on the right could pull the trigger, the sled dog launched an attack that knocked the guard on his back. Snarling, it went for the throat. At the man’s shriek, the third soldier abruptly swung around and fired.
It was the last thing he ever did. Nicolas flattened him from behind. The soldier tried to rise from his stomach, but Nicolas straddled him. With his left hand at the back of the man’s head and the other one at the base of his throat, Nicolas gave one quick, brutal twist to the neck, backward, upward, and sideways. In the suddenly silent forest, the crack of the cervical column was audible.
The priest, realizing Heaven wasn’t on his side this time, was already sprinting for the woods as fast as his weight would permit. François took off after him and easily closed the gap. With a leap, he hurled himself at the priest’s fleeing back. The rotund man was knocked to his knees and tried to scramble away. François slashed out and caught Tournaire’s white cord sash. The priest went down on all fours. He was panting or sobbing, François wasn’t sure.
“All right, Tournaire,” he snapped, “you better say your beads, because then I’m going to strangle you with them.”
The priest reared up with a strength that surprised him. His pudgy hands clutched a piece of wood he had found on the forest floor. Before François could block the blow, the priest clubbed him across the temple. The blow only stunned him momentarily, but by then the priest was off and running again and would gain the pasture and help first.
BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis Page 9