Order of Good Cheer

by Bill Gaston

  Lucien inhales deeply the smells of nocturn. It is his first week in this dwelling, and his first lying indoors in months, if you don’t count that loud and malodorous ship. Here the main smell is a most pleasant resin of fir, issuing from bed slats, wall logs, floorboards, and ceiling joists. The newly violated wood smells most. It is the smell of their injury, and they bleed a perfume for the benefit of man’s nostrils. For the several weeks this wood continues to bleed, Lucien will smell neither his pillow nor the breath or bodies of his fellows, all of whom are asleep but him. He decides to enjoy this night and not hurry sleep. Indeed, it might well be the best time he spends here, with the resin at its most benevolent. Nor have many bugs — the spiders, beetles, and small biters — followed them in to take up lodgings in their pillows, beds, and beards. On ship a man was bitten right inside his asshole and he had for days a fair agony of itching, and such were his intense postures to satisfy this itch that all the men laughed, and Benet finally laughed at himself too, and thereafter the unknown creature came to be known as “Benet’s bug,” leading to the chorus of one of the colony’s first songs: “Commit no sin, lest ye be bitten within, by Benet’s bug.”

  It is good to be indoors again. The carpenter’s curse: everyone’s place save his own is attended to. The nobles have been indoors for weeks. Of course, many of their planks were brought from St-Croix, place of pestilence, and though no physical evil abides in the wood, there is something of a malevolent spirit in the grain, looking like the long eyebrows of ill will, though of course this is only in the mind of observance. But better to start fresh, from innocent wood that has heard no moans, no cursing of God’s own name. And still smells of sweet pitch.

  Lucien realizes, in a moment of greater wakefulness, that for all the dwellings he has constructed, both from the ground up or torn down in part to make anew, he has never before built his own dwelling. Not even his own sleeping room. Of course not — his father and uncles, carpenters all, would at any hint of rot or divorced joinery pounce upon it and see it fixed. Make your own house another’s envy, his father once told him, and you will never lack work.

  It seems his father was wrong. St-Malo was overfull of enviable houses and notable carpenters, and even the best had often to travel miles to find the next endeavour. Lucien was trained on the rough doors of barns, and fencing for pigs, and Babette’s stuck windows, when she let him. He was not the best but good enough when he put his mind into the wood, and to find employ had had to travel not miles but an entire ocean, to a new world.

  Though not entirely against his will. And when, God willing, he returns, he will have the money to begin his own small enterprise, perhaps a village or two inland from St-Malo, and he knows he will not lack for work because, sadly, he will now be famous, and be expected to tell stories of exploration. To do so he will have to change his nature. Though little do the people at home know that, here, boredom soon enough becomes the biggest story, that after doing what work one can with the body, it becomes yet harder work to entertain the mind.

  Children’s games entertain some. Old leather gets stuffed with feathers for the invented contest of kicking a ball at a distant stump. (Men have demanded that Lucien carve them a proper set of boules. He may yet do so if he finds the time, and enough root-burl, which might not split.) And there are impromptu games of the most puerile: spitting, pissing, leaping to touch a nest of bees and daring not run. Always a wager of coins, a fur, rations of brandy. Almost daily there is wrestling, naked save for breeches. (Lately poor Dédé is without challenge; the last man broke a thumb; the one before, a rib; and apparently, though no one saw it, the beast ripped the hair from a poor soul’s armpit.) Others have fashioned parlour games — chess in the dirt with ranked pinecones as the soldiers. Others drink and sing, and their songs have become as common as the wind in the trees. Lucien could see the boredom set instantly in Monsieur Champlain, who it seems sets foot on land only to turn forlornly and watch the iron sea. He has already taken the longboat on two excursions, one lasting two weeks and, say the men who went, almost ended their lives on the rocks of a bald and waterless island. Lucien suspects Champlain pretends to be scouting for locales of value — oak, mines of iron or copper, vines — but he is really just escaping the smell and uniform press of land.

  God, what will winter be like?

  On his half-pillow, Lucien weighs crude hefts of mood and decides he is still partly glad to be here, over the ocean, smelling resin, more awake than during the daylight. Though he would dearly love to have his own room, if only to escape the snoring. It is a rough irony that a carpenter is not allowed his own room here, though of anyone he could most easily build it.

  octobre 1606

  MEMBERTOU IS IN the mapmaker’s room waiting for him. When Samuel enters, the old sagamore looks up and smiles and offers his hand for shaking — not at all a savage gesture but one mimicking and taking seriously these politics that the French perform without thought. Disturbingly, Membertou’s smile brings to mind the lawyer Lescarbot’s.

  As they shake hands Samuel finds it funny to think that, despite so French a smile, one that Samuel duly answers with his own, they two can more markedly smell each other. He finds himself wishing that, rather than Membertou gaining these French habits, the sagamore should best remain as he would have been before, blank of face and staring proudly. Indeed, Samuel wishes he could answer that stare with a like one of his own. Two men reading each other’s eyes, searching for strengths and weaknesses perhaps, but it is also a faster way to find friendship.

  Of the savages, Membertou alone has free access through their gate and, once in, he takes it upon himself to go anywhere he pleases. He has been discovered sitting in Sieur Poutrincourt’s chair, for instance, and Poutrincourt was on that occasion gracious enough to seat himself on the bench set there for visitors.

  “In two months, or in three months, there will be moose,” is the first thing Membertou says, though in a simpler way. Months are moons, and he uses no future tense that logic can ascertain. He holds his palms up and shoves them at Samuel, who wonders what the gesture might mean. The sagamore’s palms are white and look soft, though they likely aren’t. His hair, bound at the back, has come forward at the sides to frame his face like a hood.

  “Good. We all look forward to that.” Samuel decides it would be harmful to tell Membertou that many of the men, if not most of them, are dismissive of moose. All tried the dried version many weeks ago upon their arrival, and it was tainted.

  “The Frenchmen continue to eat beef?”

  “Yes. Beef is what we have. Barrels of beef.”

  “Moose is better than beef.”

  “We French like beef. But indeed we look forward to the moose.”

  “A barrel is not a place for meat.”

  Samuel knows not to explain salting to Membertou again, for clearly he is feigning ignorance.

  Membertou visits today only on the pretence of discussing trade for fresh meat. Samuel knows the man’s real reason is to once again ask Samuel to make him a Christian. The old sagamore will wait and wait. Today is Sunday, and Samuel wonders if it could be that Membertou has taken note, has counted days, and is here today because of it.

  They sit erect in the room’s two chairs, and Samuel flags a boy passing the open door and asks him to go to Bonneville and bring back bread, and tea. Scratching himself, hunching to glance out the square hole cut for a window, Membertou speaks casually of tomorrow’s weather, then explains how one might repair a canoe even in deepest winter, by putting fire against a tree and thereby melting out — but don’t burn it! — enough precious pitch. Only later, when the Sunday bell rings calling them in for prayer, does he rise and touch Samuel’s shoulder to ask him the important question. Samuel looks at the floor, finding it painful to deny the man, especially when he is about to abandon Membertou for the same Christian service he is requesting. And Samuel finds it ironic that this man in front of him desires this service more than Samuel does himself.
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  “I am sorry,” Samuel tells him and turns to leave. He knows that sorry is as difficult a word for the Mi’qmah as it was for the savages in Hochelaga. “I will ask the priest again.”

  He wishes Membertou would ask the priest himself, but knows he won’t. The priest is the one man Membertou is shy of.

  “Please.” Now Membertou has him by the arm and is not letting him go.

  The savage does understand that Samuel himself is unable, that he is not a priest. Membertou, though, seems to have heard of and clung to the rumour that some Frenchmen are not of the priest’s religion, and that some who are not priests but pastors can also welcome a savage into the Christian family. Samuel has no intention of entering this story with the man. Last year, in St-Croix, their settlement was blessed by the presence of both a pastor and a priest, and the two hated each other so much that they twice came to blows and de Monts (himself a Protestant) was of a mind to flog them. Truly, if one said apple, the other said plum. And when the scurve saw them both in bed they still would not forgive, and when they died within a day of each other all saw this as somehow fitting, so much so that both priest and pastor were buried in a single grave, in a forced embrace. And while other reasons were given for this act (frozen ground, too few able men with enough strength to make a second hole, and such), all knew it was to end their fighting, and Samuel sensed that all approved of de Monts’s ecumenical spirit.

  So for reasons of peace there is only a priest in Port-Royal. Samuel has no idea as to how a savage might be made a Protestant. Nor has he nearly the subtlety of language to explain how one god can have two families.

  Samuel has been to Poutrincourt for advice on Membertou’s behalf. Twice now he has told Fr. Vermoulu of the sagamore’s request, and twice the priest has simply stared at him, a stare too dense with opinion for him to read, but one he suspects is telling a mapmaker to mind his own business. While the King has decreed that Christianity be given to savages far and wide, it seems that the priests charged with this task will decide for themselves the timing of it. Indeed, Samuel thinks the priest a dark scoundrel, one whose selfishness surpasses any other’s here, a man of scant nobility who tests the true nobles’ patience (Vermoulu would call it piety) by commanding this man and that to tend the priest’s private garden and fish pond, taking the men away from their many other needful duties. Using God as his emperor, he tries to be a small king here. Samuel is only glad that Vermoulu is a quiet man who prefers his own company.

  Worse, Vermoulu doubts the savages are capable of belief at all. Samuel thinks he is only wrong. Twice during past voyages and summers in Hochelaga up the great Canada River, Samuel has been witness to savages who speak to the Devil. The Algonquin call these men their “God-speakers,” which is heresy unheard of, but which, considering their lack of baptism, a Christian might forgive. In Hochelaga three summers past, amid several Algonquin tribes under the great sagamore Besouat, on the eve of a foray against the Iroquois, the God-speaker disappeared into an especial hut with great ceremony, the rest of the tribe moaning nonsense as he did so. Samuel watched as inside this hut the man pretended all manner of riot and fits. Indeed he may have had help — the walls shook as if he were a beast twice his size. Outside, the gathered braves pretended likewise that he had become a great beast, for they aped fear and widened their eyes, and from behind trees some of the women shrieked and wept. It was all for show, but at the same time some part of them seemed to believe in it, or at least desired it to be true. Not too many minutes later the God-speaker crept from his hut and, all asweat and as if having suffered a month of deprivation and inhuman travail, his nose looking twice the size it should and his bugging eyes hanging out over it, the man in eager and oddly childlike tones explained himself to Besouat and several others of rank, but too quickly for Samuel to understand many words, and Besouat then turned and shouted the story to the crowd of men, and to the women and children huddled listening from the trees, the gist being that, according to this man’s florid exchange with his god, they would be successful in their slaughter of their Iroquois enemies. (In the announcement no mention was made of the fact that Samuel and eight musketeers were on this occasion accompanying them to battle; indeed it was in this skirmish that Champlain was to kill three Iroquois — two of them sagamores — with one shot of the arquebus. The God-speaker knew he would be fighting for their side — one wonders if he mentioned this to his god.) In any event, with this hopeful announcement the entire gathering of tribes cheered and with no interruption in the cheering commenced a riotous celebration of lunatic dance that would last until dawn. Samuel reckoned that as military strategy they could have done no worse, a good sleep being the necessary medicine for anybody about to go to war. But the dancing and singing all night indeed proved not so ill a manoeuvre. Because at dawn, following some unseen signal, the men took up their weapons and leapt into the trees and then commenced a steady running walk of some hours’ duration, and then they fought the Iroquois through the afternoon and evening — all without apparent loss of vitality. They returned at the same running pace, carrying enemies’ heads as if they weighed nothing.

  And some time into the revelry that followed — impossibly, the braves danced some more before they slept and perhaps this irked the already tired Samuel — he drew Besouat aside and declared to him that they had heard the prophecy of the Devil, not God. Besouat asked the difference. In answer Samuel asked if his God-speaker was always right in his predictions and Besouat calmly answered no. Very tired now himself, Samuel instructed Besouat that he, his God-speaker, and his tribe were blind and deaf to the one true God, who in His mercy would give them all that they needed, if they should take up Christian prayer. Samuel then asked him how they came to be here, on this earth. Besouat told at length a story: after God had made all things, He took a number of arrows, stuck them in the ground, and in pulling them up drew forth men and women, who have since multiplied in the world up until this day.

  Patiently Samuel listened and then told him that his story was false. He proceeded to instruct him in the truth, that, after creating a perfect world, God saw it needed governing and thenceforth brought their first father Adam to the Garden, and then afterwards Eve, and thence, after the Fall, the earth’s children. Besouat, knowing truth when he heard it, listened as his fellows howled and leapt behind him in the clearing and all the way down to the river. The fire lit his face and he looked respectful as a child. Samuel spoke only so much as Besouat’s wisdom would allow him to hear but nonetheless gave him essential news of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and also of Mary. At this Besouat smiled and said their beliefs were similar: the God, and Son, and Mother, and the Sun. God stood over all, and the Mother was feared because she ate them up, in death.

  Samuel went on to tell him the error of this story too, and it felt odd to be speaking in this way for, though he believed as heartily as the next man, he was no preacher. But Besouat answered that he desired to pray as a Christian, if only someone would show him how. When, seeing the long, hungry winters in Besouat’s eye, Samuel tried to tell him it wasn’t bread, blankets, and axes that Christian prayer would bring, but rather immortality, Besouat seemed to listen and was glad enough with Champlain’s promise that next time they voyaged this far west for furs they would bring their own God-speaker, a priest who would perform the necessary baptismal rite. Samuel nodded at the darkness in the direction of the immense Canada River and told the exhausted sagamore that the priest would guide him and hold him entirely under that water. At this Besouat was frightened and did not even try to hide it in front of his braves.

  So the savages do believe in that which they cannot see, and strongly. Samuel thinks they should be Christian if they so wish it. Especially these Mi’qmah here. Like the Algonquin to the west, they are of cheerful disposition, but even more so. They laugh often, sometimes for reasons the French can’t determine. They too are aware of this divide, and so they are very deliberate when speaking, speaking slowly and with long pause
s, waiting for Samuel’s nod to continue, as if in demand that they be understood. It is obvious to Samuel that many of them are of good judgement. He believes they could be taught to read —though his saying so might see him ridiculed, or worse, if this opinion of his were to voyage back to France. Even more dangerous is his thinking not only that the Mi’qmah would make interesting companions at prayer, but also that perhaps the French, too, could learn about their own God from the savages. During one of Membertou’s previous visits, as the two of them stood at the western perimeter watching the new latrine being dug, and when Membertou first broached the question about becoming Christian, Samuel happened to ask about his own religion, his own god. At this, the sagamore smiled, but nothing like Besouat’s story was forthcoming. Instead, with a childlike and almost dismissive flick of one hand, Membertou indicated the vast harbour in front of them. When Samuel asked him if his god lived at sea, or beyond the sea, he lost his smile, spun, and pointed at the tree closest to them, and then at the mountain beyond it, and next at the thunderclouds in the southern sky, and then at Samuel himself. Samuel was for a moment made proud, until, last, Membertou turned his finger in on himself.