Order of Good Cheer

by Bill Gaston

  Cleansing with seawater is what he and Dédé were this morning charged to do with Monsieur Lescarbot’s glass. Dédé insisted on carrying the pane to water’s edge unaided, and Lucien let him, guiding him with warnings of approaching stones or slippery clay. The huge man’s bare straining calves had the size and spirit of two piglets. On the beach Lucien rolled up his sleeves and went underwater to the knees, but Dédé did no such thing. He glanced back at the compound, grunted a version of “waste not, want not,” hoisted the heavy pane higher, and started licking. A few licks farther along he seemed to notice, through the tan glass, Lucien’s stare. He paused in his licking long enough to say, “Yours is this other side, here.” And from their clench his fingertips tapped the gummy virgin side.

  Lucien considered, but not long. Simply, what harm? He liked molasses. So he would have some too. He stepped up to the glass. It was nothing but bizarre and ribald to behold the hirsute Dédé, thick black pelt framing his immense red face, his pressed and liquid tongue and madly working jaw, all so close — and then to extend one’s own tongue out near it! Lucien first tasted a corner of the glass farthest from the other’s face. And it was good, wonderful, not just because unadulterated but also, in a sense, stolen. Lucien relaxed to the ease of a licking puppy; on their own his eyes fell half closed. But there came a time when their two faces approached, and here, too close, was Dédé’s formidable and wide-open working head, and now Lucien was aware of the larger man’s noises from the other side of the glass, and the pane’s slight wobble, and then they were licking, it seemed, tongue upon tongue, for Dédé had manoeuvred to place his exactly here, and it was a moment of horrible clarity. Then, when Lucien dared look and found himself perfectly eye to eye, the beast winked, and his open mouth was also a smile, though it never paused in the licking. Lucien could not tell, and still can’t, what kind of wink it was. It might have said, “Aren’t we the best of thieves?” It might simply have marked each other’s lust for this sweet. Or, and Lucien hopes not, it might have marked lust of another kind. For this man Dédé looked to be reckless in all directions. In any event it was here that Monsieur Lescarbot caught them at it, and shouted, and strode down the bank to chastise them like boys for befouling his sacred glass, and such was the noble’s tone that Lucien didn’t dare offer the science that glass could not be harmed by many hundred tongues. Quite the opposite.

  LUCIEN ASCENDS A forested slope. The dog picks up its pace to lead him, and under his feet there is almost a path. It is a path made by him alone, one he has trod perhaps a dozen times now, breaking the weakest of twigs, retarding new foliage. It leads to the promontory overlooking not just the harbour but out between the two mountains through to the great French Bay and on to the west. Looking west is less painful than looking east, and homeward.

  Walking a half-path lets him be half lost in thought, and Lucien notes how the pains of homesickness are not unlike those of hunger: not altogether disagreeable, in that their plea augurs a future fulfillment. And a sweetness in the pain resembles that delivered by certain music. There is also some philosophy to be had in homesickness: though these trees are sadly not France’s trees, in their newness is both a horror and a joy at meeting God’s limitless imagination.

  Lucien considers it an act of wisdom that they’ve brought the three dogs across the ocean, one of whom, Bernard, leads him now. Stooping to caress a dog and receive its love is the same here as it was in France, so when he caresses a dog he is wherever he wishes to be, the spirit of the act being primary, not the particular mud under one’s boots. He loves these dogs with his true heart and tries to copy their humour as they sit alertly guarding doors. Their manner reveals that the very best life has been found for them: half in the wild, half at their master’s hearth. Never has he seen dogs so content; they are quick to a command and yet, at rest, they sit so confident in their gazing at the vista, which they seem to feel they own.

  It begins to rain and, as is often weirdly the case in New France, it grows warmer for it. At home it rained the whole week before departure and in today’s rain he feels the sweet pain of envisioning his oldest brother, Albert — Albert laughing at the beer he holds in his hand, laughing at smiling women and duck farts and the surprise of a sunset. And the pain grows even sweeter in thoughts of his lovely sister Babette, closest to him in age and in heart. He will never forget the night before he put to sea. Neither of them could sleep, and for this they blamed the heat blown down on the early mistral winds. They spoke in whispers so as not to wake anyone else, and grew used to this kind of voice and the intimacy it needed — almost a touching of foreheads. They became giddy at having passed sleep by. At one point Babette took her portrait from the wall, bade Lucien come watch, placed it on her lap, and let fall numerous candle drips upon it until her face was obscured fully. Then announced, “There, I am dead.” But the marvellous thing about her is that her mood was made content by this, and it was only a momentary depression, or perhaps even a purgative.

  They left the scraping of wax from paint to the artistry of Charles the cook, who always boasted of his delicacy with knives, claiming in full seriousness that if they would only give him a knife sharp enough he could split and split a pig’s bristle until it became a feather.

  LUCIEN’S SCALP LIFTS and he leaps an inch as Bernard roars into the trees, disappearing. The dog has begun to find food of his own, though usually it amounts to nothing but a long chase. And once the noble Breton, his head half white, half black, returned to the compound with his muzzle and the brow of one eye pierced with an agony of spears. White barbed little terrors, some an inch deep, they apparently came from a fearsome creature no one wants to meet. The mapmaker Champlain, it is said, claims to know of the creature. He likens it to a beaver that launches these harpoons with its tail, but no one believes him. Lescarbot, whose camp of allegiance is larger than that of the quiet Champlain, publicly refers to the unlikely beast as Champlain’s “petit googoo.”

  Lucien continues uphill, into the rain. Bernard will find him. Perhaps because he commenced his walk while thirsty, and continues thirsty (or perhaps it is the molasses), the rain causes the foliage and its myriad greens to look lush and sweet-tempered, as if all could be eaten and enjoyed.

  How is it, Lucien wonders, that the savages hereabouts know what can and what cannot be enjoyed as food? Has it simply been a process, undertaken countless years ago, of tasting? Swallowing a slight bit, then putting one’s ear in one’s stomach, as it were, to listen for first whispers of illness? And had this trial by fatal error possibly taken place in France in its darkest early years too? For how else would their own knowledge have come about? The Bible makes mention of husbanded foods and of some others profane, but there is no list of wild plants, no warning as to which mushroom causes a devilish shouting death and which is as fine as meat in the stew. At home, in the forest behind St-Malo, none of these thoughts would have come to him; but on this path, amid all these glistening and seemingly beckoning leaves, shoots, cones, curls, pods, hoods, mosses, of which at least half he is ignorant, the savages’ knowledge as to what here is food seems like wisdom of the most miraculous kind.

  According to Lescarbot, a crude and somewhat bitter tuber found inland up the great Canada River has been unearthed and occasionally shipped and offered in the best dining rooms of Paris. He told Lucien he tasted of it once and said it was not special, but that its hard-gotten nature, like anything from the ends of the earth, embellished its appeal. The chefs call it, simply, “Canada.” As if in the tuber they were eating the very earth of this place. Lucien pictures a fine lady, head and neck falling gooselike across the table, her cheeks aflush with culinary courage, asking, “Please, may I have more Canada?”

  Monsieur Champlain, who has seen this tuber on his voyages and knows its Algonquin word, asked Membertou if it grows here at Port-Royal. While our savages have a different word for it — Champlain had to describe it with his hands — it does grow nearby, in scattered fashion, and Memberto
u, pursing his lips in distaste and shrugging one dismissive shoulder, said he bids his women search it out only when all are hungry.

  Though the gardens are in and showing some green, Lucien hears much nervous talk of food. When the nobles speak of it amongst themselves it is in the voice they use to discuss fortifications or ships that may or may not arrive in the spring with supplies. And Lucien has noted what looks like a constant difference of opinion between Messieurs Champlain and Lescarbot. (He understands that what he has witnessed is no more than what these gentlemen let escape in front of the regular men; so their arguments in privacy must be almost violent!) In short, Champlain values the savages’ food, and Lescarbot doubts it strongly as profane. The pinnacle of this argument involves the “pale, giant pine,” which Champlain insists he saw cure men of the scurvy disease in Hochelaga, to the west. And so the map-maker looks for this tree in this region and so far he has not seen it. He says the Algonquin use the word annedda for it. But Membertou stares blankly both at this word and at the description of the tree as Champlain draws it eagerly in the air with his hands, jumping to his toes, like a boy, to show its great height. Likewise he describes the needles (which he says are the cure when they are dried and boiled), comparing them with other trees’ foliage, claiming, “no, longer than that” and “yes, patterned, a weave, but less simple.” He hunts for this tree always, and asks the rest of them to as well. Those several others who survived St-Croix also hunt for it — one would have to say fretfully — and Lucien understands that this is because of what they saw last winter. Lescarbot questions the existence of such a miraculous tree, and although like any man here he fears the disease and would love to erase it from the world completely, he declares the scurve to be yet another example of God’s mercy, one no man should question. He rises to anger when the mapmaker mentions the wondrous tree, thinking it wrong to be giving men hope while not supplying the means.

  Lucien almost treads on a ring of mushrooms, which, as if knowing his thoughts, beckon in a coy way, glowing as if to present themselves. They are the colour of oyster — one of Lucien’s favourite foods, not found in their harbour or hereabouts — a colour that despite its pale hue suggests a food of great and pungent richness. Lucien is tempted to stoop and gather but does not. He does, though, make a promise to himself to begin a course of study. It would be gauche, if not possibly dangerous, to ask a woman, but one of Membertou’s sons, he is sure, would gladly walk with him after the day’s work is done. Lucien will barter something for this service if needs be, and he will take the role of student, and ask questions about this plant and that.

  août 1606

  NOT MANY MORE weeks along, Samuel hunches over a fire made in a stump, in the crotch of its roots. In his hand is a piece of stained paper, upon which is scrawled a rumour. He is about to drop the paper in to burn it, and so do Poutrincourt’s bidding.

  It seemed he knew of the paper’s content even before he’d read it.

  Indeed this new world is one of portent. Samuel has often felt it before, always in his belly, a message sudden yet pregnant as a bulb, before he brings thought to it. It could be given him by the season’s first dead leaf, or by a judgemental bird call in the distance. So it was yesterday: a monster from the depths of the mouth of the River of St-Jean.

  They’d taken the longboat to last year’s hastily departed St-Croix Island to search the burned and razed site for any well-wrought hasps, knobs, and latches, and iron that could otherwise go for cannon shot — a two-day voyage that might save their smithy two weeks’ work. The wind sped them there, and they scavenged well, despite the men’s squeamishness at putting foot to beach, let alone stooping to paw through the old settlement’s waste, let alone camping overnight, which Israel Bailleul, their pilot, likened to “picnicking in the scurve’s very breath.”

  But they found a dozen good items, as well as many nails, and on their way back Samuel bade them steer for the River of St-Jean. His stated reason was that the Sieur sought vines from that river’s upper banks for transplant in Port-Royal; in truth Samuel loved the oddity of that river mouth, its cliffs and black depths and wild rapids in certain tides. After a full summer’s time ashore he simply wanted the thrill of it.

  Yes, he had heard savage talk of “a devil that rises to eat canoes.” Last year, the young sagamore of those parts had told him of a giant yellow tree that came from the depths to leap out of the water with a roar, aiming for any man there, only to disappear for years — the savage had seen it but three times in the span of his whole life. He called it manitou, which Samuel knew meant Devil or, strangely, God, or something blasphemously between those two. And while Samuel didn’t quite believe in so patient and conniving a sunken tree, on the several times he’s pushed into the chaotic mouth of the St-Jean he’s kept a wary eye. And so, this morning: he was gazing to port, at the cliff wall, marvelling at its blackness of rock, and despite the roar of tidal rapid he thought he heard something new, swung his gaze to starboard, and here it was at its peak of rising from the water: smooth, blond, naked of bark, showing twice the height of a man! Samuel’s breath caught as the tree speared back down. It had missed them by twenty paces. Its end was a root-ball that had long been trimmed by rock and underwater storms and now resembled a fist; it would have stove them easy as a drunken boot does a grinning pumpkin.

  Two other of the men saw it too, and screamed in their seats, and some had but half seen it, but the monster — or was it a ghost? — did not return, and then the men were all a-jabber, arguing as to whether it had truly come or not; and all the voyage back they argued still. Samuel heard it double in girth and height, and Picard assayed it was white as bone, nay, was a bone, and then stood firm on this. Come winter, the tree would no doubt find its way into a song.

  In any case, a portent. And thus on their voyage back it was no accident their being hailed, outside the very entrance of Port-Royal, by the rotting bark full of Basques. Samuel bade them join Sieur Poutrincourt for a meal, exclaiming that they would be the very first guests of New France, but the Basque captain declined. They were on “an expedition,” the captain said, but murmured it in the oddest way, gazing sideways in almost a caricature of lying, though he may just have been embarrassed about the quality of his French, or his boat. But then, pierced on the end of a pike pole, a stiff piece of paper was held out to Samuel.

  A SECRET, INDEED. Standing at the smouldering stump, Samuel turns it over in his hand, reads its scrawled paragraph once more, and hisses, “The King is a fool.” A dangerous thought to give voice; he looks back over his shoulder at the compound, making sure he is alone.

  The paper is missing its seal but might be in the hand of de Monts. If so, it is true and means that the King has again been seduced by the whining merchant class (of which several in that Basque longboat on their “expedition” were a gloating example) and has revoked their monopoly on furs in New France, held by de Monts, their benefactor.

  Can the King have forgotten what happened last time? Allowing merchants to come here all-in-a-riot, to make their own barter, led to nothing but the wealth of the savages themselves. Quick to learn they could play one merchant off another, a savage held up a single scabrous beaver skin and said no to one knife, and no to two knives, and no even to a hatchet — where before, a single French knife, when proffered by de Monts alone, could win two, sometimes three beaver skins for France! Samuel himself had seen occasions where de Monts had gained furs simply for the pleasure of his Christian company.

  Rich with furs, de Monts finances this settlement, this permanence, of New France. If he now becomes bankrupt, the King is sabotaging his own heart’s desire, that of establishing his throne here, and growing French children here, and, most important of all, giving the word of God to a larger world. Samuel wonders how the King does not know that de Monts’s original plan remains brilliant, allowing as it does the birth of New France without drawing a single coin from the royal exchequer. Simply, de Monts needs only the monopoly on fur. />
  If this piece of paper is true, that licence is revoked, this colony stops, New France dies, many souls go unsaved, and — the King is a fool. But as Samuel recalls the one time he himself stood in the court and witnessed the simpering mass of bowing dancers, all smelling of false flowers, all eager to encroach on the King’s company and sweetly lie to him — Samuel wonders why he is surprised.

  Again he glances back at the compound. The sentry waves to him and Samuel waves back. Ten minutes ago Samuel saw Sieur Poutrincourt weep. For now there is the question of whether Poutrincourt still owns this smouldering stump, still owns this land of Port-Royal. It was given him by Monsieur de Monts, but is it de Monts’s still to give?

  The nobles who know this rumour will not tell the men, who even now put their shoulders into finishing their dwellings, feeding their gardens. Seed must go in now if there is any hope of vegetables, let alone grain. They cannot slump in their labours, unsure if all sprouting is for nought.

  The King is a fool. Samuel ventures these words for the third time, enough to relieve himself of a fire that almost overcrows his reason.

  But now he needs must burn this crust of paper. Poor Poutrincourt, fiercely silent, then weeping, standing more unhinged by wine than Samuel has seen him. He’d read then thrust the paper back at Samuel, his look dark enough to suggest that Samuel had himself penned it, and said, “Burn this, now.”