Song of Batoche

by Maia Caron

  She recognized their standards: Chief White Cap’s Dakota Sioux and Charles Trottier’s Métis band from the south. The day after the incident with Little Ghost, Josette had gone to speak with Maxime Lépine. He admitted that some of the Exovedes were doubting Riel and spoke privately of their outrage at the changes he wished to make. Lépine had turned to pace in front of the fire, his dark eyes unsettled. “Riel was serious when he said, ‘Rome has fallen.’ He’s taken us back to the old Mosaic laws.”

  “He goes too far,” she said. “You should vote against it.” Tall, gentle Maxime had moved heaven and earth to help Riel in Red River, and then to bring him here. He had expected a politician, not a prophet who meant to reform the Roman Catholic Church.

  When she asked him about the letters, he admitted that upon returning to Batoche after the battle, the council had met, Riel dictated the letters, and scouts had left immediately to take them to the Métis communities near Fort Pitt and Battleford. He told her that Riel had beseeched them to “gather from every side, murmur, growl, and threaten. Stir up the Indians. Take Battleford – destroy it.”

  When she went to the door, Maxime added, “He sent others too, asking the Métis and Indians to take the forts and ammunition, but not to kill anyone.”

  Staring back at him, she said, “Would the whites give up arms and their forts without a fight?” She had gone away furious, more disturbed than before. Now White Cap’s band was here, Dakota Sioux who had escaped the States twenty years past and had intermarried with Métis in Trottier’s band. It did not surprise her that Trottier had come, a friend of Gabriel’s from the hunts. But she suspected that Chief White Cap shared her grandfather’s reluctance to fight the Métis battles, regardless of their relations.

  Cleophile came out on the porch, looking tired and older than her years. When she saw the tipis, her face brightened. “Is it Nicapan’s band?” she asked, using the Cree word for both grandfather and grandchild.

  News of the massacre at Frog Lake was spreading through Batoche, but Josette could not bring herself to tell Cleophile that her great-grandfather’s warriors had killed whites—nine men, two of them priests.

  She blamed herself for the whole affair. If she had delivered the letter, as Riel had wanted her to, this would not have happened. With the opportunity to read it beforehand, she would have thrown it into the fire. Other Métis had gone up instead and read the French letters to her illiterate grandfather. Wandering Spirit had finally set up a soldier’s lodge and embarked on a murderous rampage. Word had come that Big Bear had prevented him from shooting two wives of the victims, but his war chief had taken the women prisoner. The English general had dispatched a field force from Fort Edmonton to hunt them like wolves. It was the end of Big Bear’s dream to change the treaties. Because of Wandering Spirit and other braves in the band, her Mosom was now a fugitive.

  Cleophile had been braiding her hair in one long plait, and Josette stepped behind her to finish it, quickly weaving the thick pieces, and tying the braid with a leather thong her daughter handed back. They stood silently, watching the camp. Two of White Cap’s women were coming down the Dumonts’ porch stairs and stared up at them for a moment before they started across the pasture.

  Cleophile hugged her thin chest. “Why did you stop going up to St. Laurent?” she asked, shivering.

  “Riel spoke to me only because he needed your grandfather.” To admit it made her feel like a fool. Josette regarded her for a moment. “Have you had your first blood, Nicânis, my daughter?”

  Cleophile’s face clouded. “If I did, why would I tell you?” She turned and went into the house. Josette followed, hurt, and intent on reprimanding her, but could hear the children and Norbert stirring in the backroom. Wordlessly, she and Cleophile set about frying the bannocks. Josette had just cracked eggs into another pan when there was a soft bump at the door. Cleophile opened it to the Indian women, wrapped in blankets against the cold. Josette spoke quietly in Cree, inviting them to come in and sit, but they remained standing just inside the door.

  Norbert came out from the bedroom, his face still flushed with sleep. “What’s this?” he said, taking in the scene. “You will not give these dogs our flour.”

  The other children emerged behind him and Norbert turned to them. “Get out to the barn and clean the stalls. I want the horses rubbed down too,” he said, his eyes hard on Cleophile. She went without a word, taking the younger ones with her.

  “Riel has brought their men to fight his war,” Josette said to her husband. “We can share what we have.”

  “If Riel wants the Indians close,” Norbert said, “he can feed them.”

  “I can feed who?” said a familiar voice. Riel appeared in silhouette at the door wearing his grey Stetson.

  Josette spooned the eggs out of the pan and slid them between two hot bannocks, pointedly ignoring Riel. As she gave the food to the women, he put his hand on her arm and she took a step back. They both looked up to find Norbert’s eyes on them.

  When the women had gone, Riel sat down at the kitchen table, too excited to realize that she was angry. “It is a good day,” he exclaimed. “White Cap and Trottier have come to join us, and I have been to Madame Tourond’s. The Spirit of God has spoken to me directly about her sons. I have seen them as seven glorious stars around me. To have them in our army will bring more men to our side.”

  Norbert, overwhelmed at the presence of Riel in his house, offered him tea, which he refused, saying that his stomach bothered him, and he had been fasting for days.

  Riel regarded him carefully. “Whose company do you belong to?”

  “Patrice Fleury.”

  “A good man.”

  As if he were a boy asking his father for his first rifle, Norbert pleaded to be sent scouting. Riel took off his hat and placed it on the table. When he said that there were already enough of their men on the trails, her husband tried to conceal his disappointment and went to the stove to scoop a cup of tea from the open kettle.

  “What news of les Anglais?” he asked. “Do they sit like scared rabbits in the bush?”

  “Scouts tell me that Macdonald’s general is a fat old man,” Riel said, looking at his hands. “I have been shown by the Spirit of God that he wishes to make me prisoner.”

  Norbert lowered his cup. “We will not let him close enough to take you.”

  “If I had more men like you, Norbert …” He paused and looked searchingly at Josette, who had taken up the broom and begun sweeping. “I have come to speak to your wife of a private matter.”

  Norbert drew a long breath. “Bien sûr.” His eyes rose to briefly meet hers and then he took his cup of tea outside. In a moment, she heard him near the barn, directing the children at their chores. She stood with her back to Riel, her throat burning. It was only for Gabriel that she kept her tongue, only for Gabriel that she let him stay.

  Riel was silent for a long while before he spoke. “The priests deny us the sacraments, but I have heard some of the women are secretly going to them, saying their husbands will not follow me.”

  “I too have heard,” she said, hands tense on the broom handle, “that you have declared all deserters will have their cattle shot.”

  He paused, either uncertain of her mood or how to form his next thoughts. “Gabriel is obsessed with scouting. Marguerite has a look of terror on her face when I speak to her of matters. It is only you who understands what I am trying to do here. I have prayed to God that I do not jeopardize the cause—or do anything rash—but my thoughts are like the wind and I cannot direct myself.”

  Josette swept at the floor with a vengeance. “Your letters drove my grandfather’s warriors to violence.”

  He watched her for a moment then squeezed his eyes shut. “I asked them to take the fort, not kill people and capture prisoners,” he said, in a voice weary with regret. “I cannot live without a confessor.” When he turned in the chair to face her, elbows on his knees, she understood that he meant for her to fulfill the ro
le. “I have sinned,” he began, “by praying that the general be wounded and carried from the field.”

  Josette walked slowly to the table, the broom still in her hand. “You ask forgiveness because you prayed a bullet might find the man who comes to kill you?” Aware that he watched her, she would not give him the satisfaction of meeting his eyes. Yet some part of her was curious how it would feel to absolve the great Riel. Taking her hand off the broom, she placed it on his head and felt him soften.

  “Say four Aves and four Paters and you will be forgiven this sin.”

  There was no sound except for a gust of wind rattling a loose plank on the porch. She stood motionless, realizing that it was the first time she had ever touched him. It startled her when an unexpected, pulsating wave of anguish came up through her fingertips. Breathless and a little shaken, she withdrew her hand.

  Josette had thought him impassioned, fanatically religious but now was certain that his coming back to the North-West to suffer Macdonald’s continual denial had harmed his health. Gabriel had not liked it when she agreed with Father Moulin: Riel was losing his mind. Yet how had it been possible for a man who had lost his reason to write that petition? It was brilliant. She had read it herself.

  She left Riel earnestly repeating his rosary and went to the pail near the door. A memory came at her as she ladled water into an open kettle, something she had said the day Riel had arrived last summer. Macdonald will punish us for his sins in Red River. She had said it out of frustration at Madeleine’s hero worship, but now it seemed like a forewarning. Her arm weakened, the kettle heavy in her hand as she lifted it to the stove. Would Macdonald have answered a petition written by any of them? Non. His refusal to honour it was an excuse to get rid of Riel once and for all. She stared into the kettle water, at the small flecks of bark and detritus that had come out of the river. Rebellion had been inevitable.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Riel, who still muttered his rosary, his head downcast in contrition. He seemed weighted with anxiety, a profound loneliness. She thought of Spinoza’s idea, that sorrow was a man’s passage from a greater to a lesser perfection. And then of a Cree word, kiskwesew, which meant doesn’t think straight.

  Riel had concluded the last phrase of his rosary. Although she kept her back to him, she could tell that he had not finished sharing his fears.

  “Red Pheasant and Little Pine have both died in the last month,” he said. “Their bands have joined Poundmaker’s.”

  “Have the young men put up a soldier’s lodge?”

  “They looted Fort Battleford, but have not the courage to go against the great Poundmaker.”

  A suspicion began to form in her mind. “How do you know this?”

  Riel hesitated a moment before answering. “He wrote to me, asking to hear the progress of God’s work.”

  “He cannot read or write,” she said, “and he does not believe in your God—it was one of your own men.”

  “Poundmaker is camped at Cut Knife waiting for Big Bear. Police are coming from Swift Current to disperse them. Soldiers that Middleton has sent.”

  “But Mosom has run north from the police.” She was both trying to contain her anger and determined to expose his mistaken logic. “My grandfather would not sign your petition, so you force his braves to murder. Now they are no longer useful, you bully White Cap and Poundmaker here.”

  “White Cap has come of his own accord.”

  “Calisse,” she said and took up the broom again.

  “Over one thousand are in Poundmaker’s camp now,” Riel said, ignoring her curse. “To have one like him … every other chief in the Territories would leave their reserves and join us. He will come only if we arrange for the Americans to capture Macdonald’s railway.”

  Josette felt bumps rise on her arms. She thought of when Riel had argued with Honoré when writing the petition, claiming it was threat of the Americans that had scared Macdonald into listening to their demands in Red River. “You told Honoré you never trusted the Americans, that you’d never treat with them again.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, “they are foul dogs … jackals. But the council has voted three times to send a letter to them. I have refused them until now.”

  She turned her back, continuing to sweep. “The council?”

  “I want you to take it south with Michel Dumas,” he said quickly.

  She wanted to say that she would not be his errand girl but was too curious to hear what scheme he was working. “Why me?”

  “You speak English, are smart—the perfect emissary.” She swept close to the table, and Riel stood and began to pace. “You will deliver it to a friend in Helena. He operates a newspaper there.”

  Josette had decided that it was fascinating to watch him fight with himself. What was it like inside that beautiful mind of his? He knew that it was a mistake to involve the Americans, yet he had dictated a letter, had put it before council with these very same arguments. And he had refused their decision to send it, not once, not twice, but three times.

  Riel turned in the middle of the kitchen and looked at her expectantly. “We are in a desperate situation—an Anglais general and troops so soon across the country.” He tilted his face upward, eyes closed. “I humble myself to the ground before you, Lord. Open to me Yourself the route I need to send Josette to the United States.”

  “I won’t go,” she said, trying to make him see reason. “The Americans have massacred our people. You can’t trust them.”

  Riel groaned in pain and clutched his stomach.

  “Fasting does not help you,” she said and brought him a little bannock soaked in milk. He sat down and reluctantly ate a little but when recovered, said nothing more about the letter, only that he must be at a council meeting in Batoche before noon. They went out on the porch. Norbert and the children were nowhere to be seen. Riel mounted his horse and took up the reins, looking down at her.

  “I did not trust the Americans in Red River—it’s true I refused them—I will not do so now.” He eyed her with speculation. “A letter to them will bring Macdonald to my feet. He will call off Middleton, Poundmaker will join our cause. We will have the power again.”

  He had taken off his hat and held it in one hand, reins in the other. His hair, too long now for pomade, was messed and unwashed, his moccasins caked with mud. It was useless to argue with a man who had already made up his mind, brilliant and troubled as it might be. Unlike Red River fifteen years ago, the Dominion had control here, was on the verge of bringing the North-West into Confederation with a railway built almost to the western shores. The Americans would not take the risk. And Macdonald knew it.

  Riel was now regarding her solemnly. “God has shown me that the United States are destined to inherit all the power and prosperity which Great Britain now possesses,” he said. “God in His mercy will give us a pure French-Canadian-Métis colony, a New Italy, a new Bavaria, a New Poland in the North-West to the Rocky Mountains. This land will be open to all of the oppressed peoples of the world.”

  He swung his horse north. She watched him ride away, thinking that Gabriel would soon return from scouting, and she would go to him with news of Riel’s latest obsession. And her worries that he had lost his mind. But Gabriel was on the council. Had he voted “Aye” when the vote came to send the letters? It was time to convince him that they must stop Riel.

  city of god

  The next morning, Josette poured cream into the churn in her kitchen. As she made butter, she looked out the front window, keeping her eye on the Dumont’s house. Finally, Gabriel crossed his yard and disappeared into the saloon. She’d learned that he had returned from scouting when Pierre Garnot had passed by on his way from a council meeting in Batoche. Madeleine had come out too and went into the barn. A few minutes later, she drove out their horse and wagon, heading north on the trail. As soon as Madeleine was out of sight, Josette left the churn to Cleophile and hurried across the front pasture, a tin of brewed willow bark tea in her hands. She did n
ot like going behind Madeleine’s back to see Gabriel. But she wanted to avoid the look they’d been given at the New Year’s dog race.

  She paused in the doorway of the saloon where he had so often welcomed freighters on the trail in the days before Riel had come. Gabriel stood with his back to her, both hands on the pool table, a crude map spread out before him. It wasn’t often she got a chance to observe him unnoticed. He had on a checked flannel shirt and woolen pants that were held up by an old leather belt and his faded ceinture fléchée. Tied under his knees were the pair of beaded garters he always wore. His hat was off, a freshly tied cloth wound around his head.

  If the bullet had found him a fraction of an inch lower, he would not be here, intent on a map of the South Branch, his body a story of exhaustion and pain. He pulled one of his hands off the table, pressing a fist against his leg. In a moment, his shoulders relaxed. Madeleine said that a stabbing pain often struck him without warning, sometimes sending him to his knees. He sensed that he was not alone and turned, as though expecting to see someone else, maybe even Riel. When he realized that it was her, some mysterious emotion passed over his face.

  “Kiya,” he exhaled in Cree, You. He shut his eyes briefly and when he opened them again, looked directly at her.

  She struggled to bring her thoughts together, then saw a bottle of rum open on the bar behind him. It was a combination of alcohol and pain talking. The torture of his wound—an injury that would have killed a lesser man—had changed him, made him more vulnerable. She should not feel roused by regard from the great Gabriel Dumont. But she was sure that other women had been on the receiving end of his penetrating looks and wondered how it would feel to be touched by the best man in the South Branch with a horse and a gun.