Bride of New France

by Suzanne Desrochers

  She crouches down and reaches into the chest for the new dress she is making. Once she removes her sewing, she closes the chest and sits on it. She holds her fingers over the flame until they feel warm enough to begin. Above her, where she has hung it from the ceiling, is Mireille’s dress. On evenings when the wind is howling particularly hard, Laure watches the dress. It both frightens and comforts Laure to see the diaphanous yellow material swaying, suspended in air, above the frozen dirt floor of the cabin. It is as if a ghost is performing a gentle dance for her.

  There are other women in the seigneurie, but Laure hasn’t seen any of them since early winter, when the paths between their cabins could still be traversed. Madame Tardif had even invited Laure to spend the winter with her and her children, but Laure had refused. She had been worried about how Mathurin would react if she abandoned the cabin for the winter. If she left, the snow and freezing air would soon overtake the feeble construction and its contents. They would have to start all over again in the spring, chopping trees to repair it, building a new fireplace, another lit-cabane. All of Canada was dotted with these inchoate, abandoned attempts at settlement. Where would she go in the spring if she lost even this? Besides, there is no way she could have carried their possessions to the Tardifs’. There were no horses or oxen in the settlement.

  Of course Laure couldn’t have imagined that winter would be this bad. Now that she really needs the other women of Pointe-aux-Trembles and would be more than willing to give up the foolish venture of holding on to Mathurin’s meagre hut, the snow has grown so deep, up to her waist, that she doesn’t dare try to make it to one of the neighbouring cabins.

  Besides, Laure is the only girl in Pointe-aux-Tremble from Paris. The others are Canadiennes and accustomed to the winters and to being left alone to endure them. They have their children and the knowledge they need to survive until spring. Last fall, Laure had tried to show Madame Tardif the dress she was working on. In response, the severe woman had simply asked her if she had finished the needlework the women had been assigned by the Congrégation Notre-Dame. The sewing they were asked to do was meant to be their work for the entire winter. In the spring they would receive payment, probably in seeds to plant their first garden. Laure had proudly shown Madame Tardif the folded pile of men’s white shirts and the dozens of pairs of socks she had finished knitting. Laure had finished the winter’s work in the first two weeks after Mathurin left. But she was supposed to have children to care for, or at the very least to be pregnant with her first one. There was no work as important as birthing babies for the new colony.

  Even when she saw that all Laure’s assigned work was done, Madame Tardif was still not interested in the dress she was making. “We don’t need city dresses like that here. You’ll soon learn not to waste time on your appearance.”

  This same woman also told Laure, when she had complained about Mathurin’s leaving her alone for the winter, that a woman who refuses her husband is to blame if he goes elsewhere.

  Laure isn’t sewing the new dress for herself. When she chose the material from her coffer, she had been thinking of Madeleine. It was the pale blue serge given to her by Madame du Clos as a parting gift. Instead of lace, Laure sewed onto the bodice a trim of fox fur from the scraps left by Mathurin in a corner of the cabin. It wasn’t a dress anyone would wear in Paris. But Laure thought Madeleine would like it. It suited the new country, would be perfect for a forest angel.

  Laure hums a few bars of one of the hymns Madeleine used to sing as she pushes the needle through the fabric. She tries to remember Madeleine’s exact measurements.

  When the last of the dim day fades, Laure carefully cuts off the needle and thread and packs it back into the chest. She takes the dress into her arms and carries it with her to the lit-cabane. She lies down and closes the door, gazing into the black. The fox fur tickles her nose. When Laure hugs the material against her chest, it flattens and she can feel her own ribs and hips beneath it. What a fool she had been to complain about the crowded quarters of the Salpêtrière. What she wouldn’t give to have someone else beside her now in this bed that feels so much like a coffin. Laure’s fingers move across the fur at the bodice as if she is holding a rosary. The sound of the wind makes her forget even the basic prayers she learned at the hospital.

  Laure is awakened by a loud rapping at the door. It is the middle of the night. Her first thought is that a branch has come loose from a tree and is being hurtled by the wind against the cabin. She then wonders if there is an animal outside, a bear or a wolf. She crawls out of the bed and tries to distinguish the shapes in the room by the dim light of the fire. The knocking is clearer this time. But who could have reached her across all the snow? The board that she carefully places across the door each night might not be strong enough to withstand the force of whoever is outside. Laure fumbles for Mathurin’s gun and takes it from the shelf.

  She puts her shoulder to the door. “What do you want from us?”

  “It’s Deskaheh.”

  The sound of his voice brings a surge of blood to Laure’s chest. What is he doing here? What if Mathurin had been here? She unlatches the door and he enters in a snowy draft. She doesn’t recognize him at first. He is covered in thick furs and has snowshoes on his feet. Only his nose and eyes are exposed. He notices the gun in her hand and the clothes she is wearing that belong to Mathurin. But he doesn’t laugh at her.

  “You can’t come here.” She whispers the words, as if her neighbours, who are each ensconced in a tomb of snow, might actually hear what is happening inside her cabin.

  “I know your husband is gone for the winter. I saw him leave.” He looks at Laure, making sure she has understood his French. Then he starts speaking in one of the Savage tongues.

  “I don’t speak your language,” she says.

  “He should have taught you.” He shrugs and shakes the snow from his shoulders, then removes his snowshoes and leans them against the wall.

  “My husband was also going to teach me how to shoot a gun. In case there were intruders while he was away.” Laure takes a step back into the cabin, holding the musket against her chest.

  Deskaheh smiles. His shadow on the wall expands as he moves. Covered this way in furs, and standing so close to her in the cabin, Laure thinks that he looks more like a beast than a man. He is much bigger than she is. She regrets that she spoke to him through the fence this summer. That she undressed for him at the window.

  Most women would scream. She is sure of that. And yet Laure remains quiet and waits. She puts the gun back on the shelf. Even the company of this Savage, who might very well have come to kill her, is better than being alone.

  Deskaheh pulls something from a pouch at his side. The frozen offering looks like the corn mush she ate when she first arrived in the colony. It has retained the shape of the pot it was cooked in. She takes it in her hands. He looks down at her stomach and touches his own. She steps back to let him further into the cabin. She has been hungry for weeks and even the corn mush is a welcome meal. He also has with him a sack of dried berries.

  She takes the frozen soup over to the fire and drops it into the pot suspended over the embers. She gets another log from the pile and takes the time to stir the ashes with the poker until the flame grows strong enough to consume the wood.

  When she turns back, Deskaheh is seated against the wall on the chest from the Salpêtrière. He has removed the outermost layers of his furs and now looks less like an animal and more like she remembers him. He still seems taller than he did last summer. And older. She can no longer see the boyishness in his face.

  “That animal looks starved.” Deskaheh points his chin toward the pig, lying on its side, but his eyes don’t move from Laure’s face.

  Laure glances at her stand-in husband. Lying among the branches, Mathurin the pig barely looks alive. She hadn’t really noticed the extent of the animal’s decline.

  “Either it eats or I do. We take turns.” Laure had been surprised at how much
the beast needed to be fed. There were the oats from last fall, which she had given generously at first, but now the sack is so close to being empty that the amount she feeds him each morning has to be rationed to a small handful. At the start of winter, Laure had to fight to keep the pig within the confines of the pen she had devised, but in recent weeks, it barely moves, lying listless and still.

  “Your husband is staying with us this winter.” Deskaheh looks at Laure with a serious expression. “He explained to everyone where he built his cabin. That’s how I knew how to get here.” He laughs, and she catches a flicker of his face as it looked in the garden last summer.

  Mathurin had told her that he was going to get furs at a three-week journey past Ville-Marie on the Outaouais River. But Laure doesn’t know much about what goes on beyond the settlements. The sisters of the congregation said that the forests are where the French men who are without God go to live and that the illegal coureurs are the bane of the colony, hindering settlement efforts by leaving their homes, and interfering with the conversion of the Savages by bringing brandy to trade with them.

  Over the months, Laure has also heard scraps of stories, mostly about the men who die, ambushed by the silent and deadly Iroquois, or less glorious tales of accidents: slipping on the rocks trying to cross a patch of rapids in the river, or getting in a fight over a bottle of brandy with one of the allied Savages.

  “We are camped close to here.” The place Deskaheh mentions doesn’t sound familiar to Laure. There are so many names for the same lakes, rivers, streams, and woods of the colony, depending on who is speaking. Laure cannot distinguish between them.

  She goes to the fire and stirs the pot of gruel. The steam rises from the bubbling soup and her stomach starts to growl. “Mathurin is nearby?” she asks.

  “Yes. Nearby. Our hunters have gone all the way to the Outaouais, to the people you call Cheveux-Relevés. But not your husband. He has stayed behind with the women and children.”

  “Behaving like a dog?” It is no secret to the women of the settlement that the coureurs take on Savage women when they head into the forest. Laure doesn’t really mind. She is happy that someone else has to sleep with him.

  “He’s no different from the others. They prefer the filles sauvages over their own wives.”

  Laure wonders if he is mocking her. She wants to say that she doesn’t care what Mathurin prefers. She pours the soup into a bowl and brings it to Deskaheh, and then pours some for herself. She stands beside the pot looking at him in the corner of the room. He takes the fur overcoat he was wearing and carries it over to the fire, indicating that they should sit on it.

  “When I was a boy among the Haudenosaunee, some of our leaders used to say that we should kill every single French man.”

  Now that he is closer, she can see that his nose is still crooked from when Mathurin struck him. He looks up at the yellow dress hanging from the ceiling. She wonders if he remembers that she had been wearing it when they first met. They eat in silence. He eats more slowly than she does, and she feels him watching her as she devours the contents of her bowl. The corn soup is thick and fills her stomach with warmth. Her fear has turned into relief. He points at the red hat on Laure’s head. She forgot she was wearing it and removes it. He takes it from her hand and tries it on. She laughs at the serious expression on his face as he looks to her for approval.

  “So how do you know they won’t have moved on without you by the time you get back to them?” she asks him.

  “When I left them, they were so drunk off the brandy the coureurs brought that they couldn’t have killed even a rabbit if it was lying right beside them in their tent.”

  She takes his bowl and piles it on top of hers. “Thanks for bringing me this soup.” Laure imagines Mathurin being fed by the Algonquin women each day, having a great time while she is barely staying alive in his poorly built hut. Her only company is a pig.

  “I was captured by the Algonquins in my thirteenth summer. I can’t imagine staying with them for the rest of my life. I want to leave in the spring.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Back where I belong. To the Haudenosaunee.”

  “The Iroquois?”

  Laure remembers Mathurin’s words on their wedding day. How he had said that Deskaheh was actually an Iroquois captured by the Algonquins. She thought Mathurin had just been making that up to keep his new wife from talking to the Savage.

  Deskaheh doesn’t look any different from the other Savages that hang around Ville-Marie, the ones that are allied with the French. She expected the Iroquois to look more frightening, to have their heads shaven and their faces painted, and for them to think only of butchering the French and eating their ears and fingers and hearts.

  “If you go back and live with the Iroquois, you’ll be the enemy of the people of Ville-Marie.”

  “No, I’ll still be a friend of the Christians. I know enough people here that I will still be able to trade. Besides, there are other Iroquois here, the French Iroquois. The ones who left the longhouse to come live like beggars with the French.”

  Laure wishes she could go back to the place where she wants to live her life. But there is more than a forest and some Savage tribes between her and Paris. Besides, there is nothing for her to go back to. The hospital is probably filled with new women, the lacemaking workshop taken over by younger girls with smaller fingers.

  As if reading her mind, Deskaheh says: “Your husband will be back soon. We have almost reached the beginning of the bright month, and soon after, the snow will become water and flow back into the river. When this happens, your husband will return.”

  After a while, Deskaheh stands up. Laure feels like a child. There is so much she wants to say, but she can only think of simple things like crying, gratitude. She almost tells him not to go, but it’s too late because he’s standing and saying demain, for her to eat the leftover soup in the pot tomorrow. She stumbles to her feet and hands him his coat. She promises him she will eat the rest of it. She wants to give him something, but she knows that she has nothing to offer.

  The following morning Laure opens the door to the cabin. She gasps to see that the fresh snow is stained red with blood. There is a deer carcass at her door. She drags the frozen animal into the cabin. Was it there all along while they sat and talked last night? Or did Deskaheh kill the animal after he left her?

  She takes Mathurin’s knife from the shelf and sits for a moment considering how to skin the animal. She lifts the head and shoulders onto her lap and digs the blade into the chest. It doesn’t penetrate the frozen skin. She drags the deer over to the fire and puts two fresh logs onto it. After half an hour or so, the flesh begins to soften a little. She lifts the deer’s head and stabs the knife into the chest. She saws the flesh open and is rewarded when heavy drops of blood spill onto the dirt floor. She reaches inside the animal and pulls at the guts that have started to thaw. Mathurin the pig has risen onto shaky legs and is whining. Laure tosses some of the innards into the pen.

  When Laure’s hand reaches the deer’s heart, she tightens her fingers around it. She closes her eyes, expecting to feel a warm pulse. She waits for the animal to tell her something about where it came from, about the man who killed it. She wants the deer heart to release its secret into her waiting hand. Around her, in the cabin, there is nothing but the animal sound of hunger.

  Weeks of the winter pass, and the scent of the corn soup fades from the cabin walls. A few stringy pieces of deer meat, more rotted than dried, hang beside the fire. Laure chews on these to calm the hunger that has become a screaming rage in her gut. She has received only one other guest since Deskaheh left that night, and it was a colony official, dressed also like a bear. He and several others had traversed the paths with sleds and snowshoes to bring Laure and the other women of Pointe-aux-Trembles a package of supplies—some cabbage, a little pork, a wool blanket, and a few candlesticks. In exchange Laure had given him the sewing and knitting she had done for the col
ony’s bachelors.

  Bolstered by the soup she made from the pork and cabbage and encouraged by the French man’s promise of spring, Laure borrowed an axe from the Tardifs and stumbled through the snow to chop some more wood for the fire. She had returned to the cabin from this venture with little more than a few sticks and fingers and toes that burned.

  Amidst all of this, there is still no sign of Mathurin. Instead, it is Deskaheh who returns to see Laure late one night. She hears him first at the window and opens the shutter to see him there. She can see that Deskaheh’s face is a scowling shadow and she has an idea what he has returned for before she opens the door. By now Laure can recognize that look on a man. A sick wave builds in her chest. She wouldn’t call the feeling fear, although it emanates from the same place in her body.

  She slides the board away from the door and steps back to let Deskaheh in.

  “Your husband is still gone?” he asks.

  “He will come back any day.” Laure wants to ask Deskaheh why he has returned, why he has fixated on her in this way after she told him to stay away from her last fall. It isn’t convenient, sneaking through the winter forest to meet her like this. Surely there is a woman in his village that Deskaheh can marry. As for Laure’s situation, there isn’t much to be done about Mathurin. But Deskaheh here now with that resolute look in his eyes isn’t going to help that matter either. She shouldn’t have let him in.

  He removes his coat and seems like a frozen bird spreading giant wings of fur. He looks around the cabin, at Laure’s sewing lying out on the table where they ate the soup a few weeks earlier, at the fire emitting its weak heat, at the near-empty cupboard, over to the corner at the lit-cabane where she has been sleeping alone. Then his eyes turn to look at Laure. She is wearing a wool shawl over her arms and shoulders and a heavy winter dress.