The Hôtel-Dieu is the largest stone building near the water on rue Saint-Paul. Mathurin says that it is part of the original settlement from twenty years ago and one of the first places to be built in Ville-Marie. At the door, they are greeted by a young woman in a bright white habit. Laure feels her chest constrict. She forgets for a moment that she is in the middle of the forest. Instead she is standing in the sun on the parvis of Notre-Dame in Paris. She is surrounded by beggars and priests. She hears the ringing of bells. Women in white habits carry sheets from the river to replace the soiled ones on the rows of beds. The river is dirty and narrow enough to build footbridges across it. The ancient city centre is alive with the pleas of beggars and the horse hooves of the noblemen. The church at her back contains the souls of ancient spirits. Mireille is reaching for her with swollen fingers. It is too late.
Mathurin lifts his cap from his head when he sees the young girl at the door. Laure thanks him for the escort, assuring him that she will not need his company inside the hospital. She is relieved that Madeleine has been brought indoors. The Hôtel-Dieu in Ville-Marie actually looks like a hospital, not like the crowded Hôtel-Dieu of Paris, but a rudimentary and clean country hospital. Unlike the modest wooden houses of Ville-Marie, the Hôtel-Dieu is a sturdy stone construction.
Laure enquires as to Madeleine’s whereabouts, and the young girl leads her into the cool entrance and up a spiral oak staircase. Laure smells herbs and tinctures as they pass the pharmacy. The room at the top of the stairs is large and bright. The windows are open and the air is gentle and soft. Madeleine is lying in her own bed. Two other girls from the crossing were also brought in exhausted by the sun and the arduous canoe journey. But, unlike Madeleine, they are sitting up chatting, restored by a few hours of rest and medicine. There are even several empty beds in the room. For the first time Laure feels hope that their lives will be favourable in the colony. Surely Madeleine will be healed in this room.
Laure walks over to where Madeleine lies. “Are you feeling better now that we’re off the boat?”
Madeleine looks up. There is a puzzled frown on her face. She is awake but doesn’t seem to register her surroundings or recognize Laure. The nurses must have given her some medicine.
Laure sits on the edge of the bed and recounts to Madeleine the details of the welcome ceremony and the loud voice of the colonists as they sang the Te Deum. She also tells her about the hill with the cross from the early missionary days of the settlement. The men and women who established Ville-Marie planned to build a holy place. How all you can see are trees and fresh land from the top of the hill. Madeleine’s face relaxes a little at the sound of Laure’s voice. She falls asleep, and Laure continues to speak holding her hand.
After a few minutes, the Soeur hospitalière comes up behind Laure. “You will like it here, I am certain. The people of Ville-Marie live to help one another,” she says.
The nurse is young. She tells Laure that she is from Paris and that when she was a girl she read about Jeanne Mance, one of the first women to tend the sick in Ville-Marie, and wanted to come to Canada. She said she saw the colony in her dreams. Laure thinks that this timid girl would have much in common with Madeleine.
Laure asks the young nurse if she had seen all the trees and the vast river in her vision. If there had been Savage Iroquois. Laure wonders how anyone in Old France could imagine this forlorn country.
The nurse replies that she didn’t see the land at all but knew the name of the place. She saw only the hospital and the sick she was meant to care for.
“I got a sense of the helpful nature of Ville-Marie from my companion today,” Laure says. “The man who brought me here,” she adds.
The girl laughs. “There is no shortage of men looking to do favours for women here.”
The girl is smiling at Laure the way a good officer would have done at the Salpêtrière. It is a look of charity. Laure is starting to think that there is nothing but piousness in this country. The nun on the ship was teaching the sailors and soldiers to leave behind their lewd ways; something about a baptism by sea. The Jesuit in the canoe insisted on the virtue of pushing forward to convert more Savages, and the Governor spoke on the hill about the worthy endeavour of pouring sweat and labour into the colony’s forests to create a new French town.
Laure doesn’t think she is good enough for the designs of these dreamers, especially without Madeleine to tell her when to hold her tongue.
Laure wrings out the wet cloth in the ceramic bowl beside the bed and places it on Madeleine’s forehead. Hours have passed since the welcome ceremony and it is growing dark, but she cannot leave the hospital. What have I done to Madeleine by bringing her here? Laure wonders. Could I not have been content exchanging letters with her from here and hearing about the Salpêtrière as she became an officer? The Salpêtrière rules meant that the Superior would have to read Laure’s letters before they reached Madeleine. But would that really have mattered so much?
Laure kneels beside the hospital bed and says a genuine prayer. It feels like the only thing to do in the empty, silent room. She cannot think of the appropriate Latin words repeated to her each day at the Salpêtrière, so she speaks in her French voice.
Laure first says to God that she hopes He really has followed them across the Atlantic to Canada. She prays that these priests and nuns are not deluded and being mocked in their Christian faith by some Savage deity with true dominion here. Laure asks for forgiveness that she urged Madeleine to leave the Salpêtrière. She has made Madeleine give up her dreams of being an officer, of reading from prayer books to the girls in the dormitories, only to be here, now, worn out from the long journey across the sea. Laure knows now that if she had prayed more, the way Madeleine did, she never would have written the letter to the King complaining about their food, nor would she have persuaded Madeleine to come with her. Being here with Madeleine so weak is worse than any fate she could have imagined in Paris. Laure makes the sign of the cross and touches Madeleine’s hand.
As if her prayer had an instant effect, Madeleine awakens. Her eyes open and she tries to sit up. She begins to speak, and Laure smiles, elated to hear the familiar voice. But Madeleine doesn’t ask about the hospital in Ville-Marie, or how she got there. She doesn’t seem to be aware at all that they have crossed the sea and landed in the New World. Laure takes Madeleine’s slight shoulders and lifts her so she is propped up and sitting.
Madeleine’s eyes seem to be looking beyond the room around her into her past. She says that the Salpêtrière is the biggest building she has ever seen, greater even than the fort that looks out over the sea at La Rochelle. Some of the women inside the dormitories scream the entire day, but there is no need to be frightened. She says that Madame du Clos is kind and teaches her how to be deft with the sewing needle.
“She is so kind that she coaxes bright flowers of thread from our fingers,” Madeleine says, her eyes growing wide. “You are my best friend and a tough girl. You expect more from this world than it intends to give you and cannot understand a quiet girl like me who does nothing but pray.”
Laure is glad that Madeleine is speaking at last, but she fears she will expend too much effort and so pushes gently against her shoulders. But the small girl resists with remarkable strength.
“I like it when you talk to me during the dining hall prayers, about leaving the hospital, about making a place in the city. I am amazed by all the possibilities you come up with. Let us be seamstresses, you say, even though I don’t have the hands for it. You tell me that we will find a small apartment and get hired out as servant girls just like you did as a child in the Enfant-Jésus.”
Laure can see now how absurd it had been to dream of these things. After all, what chance did they ever really have of leaving the Salpêtrière except to be banished across the sea?
“We both know what happens to girls who can’t find work as seamstresses or servant girls. You have watched the arrival of those fallen women and heard about the ones
who end up chained in the basement of the hospital. But you don’t worry about that fate. Instead you write a letter to the King, imploring him to give us a better life.”
Finally Madeleine turns her head to look at Laure.
“Like Mary of Egypt, who crossed the Jordan to find glorious rest, I have also found peace across the water. I am happy you brought me here.” Then Madeleine’s eyes grow dull. They remain open but she is staring at the ceiling.
Laure needs for Madeleine to say something more. Even if only to request that they pray together.
Madeleine smiles, and Laure reaches in the air. She doesn’t know how to hold back a soul in flight.
When Laure finally stands, her knees are red and sore from the hard wooden slats of the floor. The same young nurse re-enters the room and lights a candle. She tells Laure in a quiet voice that she will need to make her way over to Marguerite Bourgeoys’ congregation before nightfall.
“The Iroquois wait for sunset and lurk close to our buildings, ready to pounce on us.” She places her hand over Laure’s and pulls the sheet over Madeleine’s face.
The spell is broken. Laure begins to cry. She calls Madeleine’s name over and over again.
14
In the middle of the night Laure hears someone drop the trunk in the attic room. She closes her eyes again, wanting only to sleep, to forget. But the calming effect of the laudanum is wearing off. Her stomach aches. She remembers screaming in the Hôtel-Dieu throughout the entire night until her throat could produce no more sounds. The following day two sisters came for her and brought her a long way across the trails to this room in the Congrégation Notre-Dame.
Laure feels her hands flutter up from her thighs like birds struggling to fly. She reaches beside her in the darkness for the trunk from Paris. Her fingers touch the sodden wood. She leaves her hand there and dozes again.
The next time Laure awakens, her third day in Ville-Marie is dawning. Girls outside the room are talking about a funeral. They are whispering about the strange girl from Paris who arrived at the congregation yesterday, crazed, from the hospital. Some of them remember Laure from the ship. She is the one who dances, the one who was baptized by the monster, they say. A few of the girls from la Pitié tell the others that in Paris Laure behaved even worse. Laure doesn’t care about their lies.
There is enough dawn light to make out the shape of the trunk beside her on the floor. She gets out of bed and kneels beside it. When she opens the lid, the dank smell of mould rises up from it. The linen handkerchiefs Madame du Clos placed on top of Laure’s belongings are moist and slimy. Laure removes them, along with the other contents from the top of the trunk, some of which have been damaged by sea water.
When she reaches what she is looking for, she is thankful that the paper is still dry. She lifts the heavy package onto the bed and removes from it the gown she carried from Paris. Laure runs her fingers across the fine yellow fabric and over the beadwork, feeling for any damage that might have occurred during the long voyage. She holds it up to the sun coming through the attic window. The dress has survived.
It seems like years have passed since this spring when Mireille died. So much has changed since then. Laure can hardly remember the times she spent working so hard to write a letter to the King, to adjust Mireille’s gown to the latest fashion in the basement workshop of the hospital. Now she will wear the dress to Madeleine’s funeral.
Laure can still smell the sea journey in her hair. She has not been able to cleanse herself of the long ocean crossing. She brings a strand to her mouth. There is still a taste of salt on it. Laure doesn’t want to see the girls from the ship at the funeral. She barely spoke to them, staying most of the time below deck trying to coax Madeleine to eat, wiping her forehead in hopes that she would grow stronger. Neither did she talk to them much as they journeyed in canoes up the river to Ville-Marie. The ones they have sent to Ville-Marie, the farthest outpost of the colony, are homely country girls and gaunt Pitié residents. The best-looking and healthiest women were chosen to stay at Québec.
Laure will need to ask one of these girls, sleeping in the dormitory room outside the alcove, to tie the bodice of her gown for the funeral. For now, she climbs into the whalebone corset, lifting the heavy skirt to her hips and sliding her arms through the sleeves of the dress. She lies back down on the cot when this is complete. She can feel the sweat forming on her body from the congested warmth of the tiny attic room. She listens to the country accents of the girls in the dormitory and dozes a little, her arms laid across her chest like a corpse.
Laure enters the adjoining room in the congregation where the other girls have been sleeping. The room is smaller than the dormitory at the Salpêtrière, though each of the girls has her own bed. Laure has entered from the alcove room wearing the jewelled gown of bright yellow and red. Her hair is loose and hangs over her shoulders and down her back like a dark cape. The other girls still have on their thin grey nightshirts for sleeping. A few have already laid out on their beds tattered cotton frocks for the funeral.
The girl that Laure approaches to tie the dress makes a quick movement backward on her bed before agreeing with a nod to the task. With nervous fingers, she does her best to tighten the leather string around Laure’s slight waist. When the dress is properly tied, Laure turns to the others and smiles. “I am here to marry an officer.”
Laure removes from her bodice the small locket she took yesterday from Madeleine’s trousseau. “This is the man I have come for. He will be my husband.” She holds out the chain to them and they watch it swing back and forth. Laure doesn’t let the three country girls, with their thick, dirty fingers, touch the locket. Instead she holds it open for them at such a distance that they have to strain their eyes, the way Laure once did, to make out Frédéric’s features.
The funeral is held at the Ville-Marie cemetery near the river. The procession includes the Jesuit priest who travelled with them from Québec, a colony administrator several ranks below the Intendant who officiated at yesterday’s ceremony, two soldiers from the Carignan-Salières regiment, including the one who walked Laure to the Hôtel-Dieu, the nurse present at Madeleine’s death, some of the sisters from Marguerite Bourgeoys’ congregation, and a few Algonquin Savages. The two Jesuit priests, including the young one who spent so much time talking with Madeleine, are holding the funeral ceremony. The younger priest keeps his eyes downcast as the rites begin.
The Algonquins have come to bury, alongside Madeleine, an elderly man of their nation who died of smallpox. He was a Savage converted by the Jesuits, which is why he will be buried in the Catholic cemetery. Two holes have been dug in the earth for the bodies. The Hospitalières have sewn Madeleine’s body into a canvas sack, while the corpse of the Savage has been left exposed. His face and shirt have been painted red, which frightens the newly arrived girls. The other Ville-Marie residents seem accustomed to this tradition. An old woman takes the shovel offered to her by a soldier and begins to throw dirt over the body.
One of the younger Savage men looks past the assembly to Laure. He is standing at a distance, away from the priest and the other French settlers. He seems interested in Laure’s bright dress but averts his eyes when she notices him staring.
Laure wonders if the other soldier is the officer Frédéric. She is wearing his locket around her neck. Looking around at the colonists, there doesn’t seem to be anybody above the rank of shoe cobbler here. Laure wears the locket like an amulet to protect her from the brute she will soon be expected to marry. Madeleine, there should be princes and dukes to honour you, she thinks, gazing at the stark burlap sack with Madeleine’s body inside. What a small mark you have left in the world. Not one of these fools mumbling their incantations has ever heard you speak. What a gentle voice you had. And always such good words that came from you. Only the young Jesuit, shaking incense smoke over your body, has some idea what a fine and noble person you were. As pure as a saint.
Laure wonders what the new priest feels to
be uttering prayers over Madeleine’s dead body. The older priest hurries through the incantations, accustomed to death. But perhaps the young one is touched by Madeleine’s passing, heartbroken even. What will become of him, choosing to leave behind a soft childhood and a good education to be here among residents of the kingdom’s poorhouses and merciless Savages? How long will it take before these vast woods swallow him too? A month? A year? Will he emerge like the bent man beside him with mutilated limbs, speaking words in Savage tongues, numb to death?
The priest keeps repeating what a shame it is that Madeleine’s young life was wasted. That this girl, brought over at the King’s expense, will never become a colony wife, will not live to raise any children. If only this religious man could know that you preferred to die than to break the vow of chastity you made all by yourself without the support of any orders, without wearing the clothes of a holy woman.
Only that ugly Savage sees that I have on my finest gown for you, Madeleine. You would probably tell me not to call him ugly. But even from a distance I can see that his face is scarred. Madeleine, you are the saint of nowhere now. How can you be laid to rest here, in this brutal forest? How will you know where you are? He is looking at me again, and I think it’s sympathy in his black eyes, but I can’t read the faces of Savage strangers.
Laure’s shoulders begin to tremble and she sways on her feet. The young Algonquin notices and rushes over to her. “Malade?” he asks.
Laure shakes her head. His face is marked by the same disease that killed the old man. Laure has heard much about this disease that has claimed so many of the Savages living near the French, has even made some of them think that the Jesuit priests carry with them the curse of this disease. Unlike so many of his kind, though, he has survived. Mireille and Madeleine succumbed to their diseases. Now that he is beside her, Laure can smell the animal grease and hides that cover his body. It is already an odour she associates with Canada. She became familiar with it on the canoe journey, on the long, silent days spent cutting into the river with wooden oars and sleeping in the forest at night. The men laughed at Laure when she complained that they smelled of rotten flesh like butchers. That is the smell of Canada’s silver, they said.
Bride of New France Page 14