by Bill Gaston
TODAY IS THEIR Sieur’s birthday and on the cook’s shout Lucien along with all the other men is invited to gather in the courtyard, around the flagpole, to enjoy two fingers of brandy and toast the noble birth.
He has the shutter open just enough to let a beam in. Lying abed he savours the day’s section of Homer. Each time he turns a page he regrets his fingers’ calluses, the rough stain of his trade. It is Lucien’s second time through, and he anticipates Odysseus encountering the cannibal Laestrygones, a thrilling and favourite part. He wonders if he could simply remain here and not be missed. Depending on the noble’s mood it is an insolence he could be flogged for, but the risk of being caught is small, since no one would expect any man here not to gallop like a horse in the direction of a whiff of brandy. Lucien does not care much for it except as a digestif to ease heavy foods. In quantity, the joy it brings comes on too quickly and then all turns simply common, where the cause of a song or a fight could be one and the same. Though one cup of brandy will not lead to this. Lucien presses his book flat under the mattress and rises.
The courtyard is bathed by the richly oblique sunlight of four o’clock on a November afternoon, a falling but vivid light which Lucien suspects must exist wherever one journeys in the world, the sun being the sun. A heavy and liquid light, whatever it touches invites description in poetry. Even men’s faces gain depth and beauty, even the harmed ground at their feet. Lucien sees, there, a friend’s cheek and thinks of the word edible, then understands he has been reminded of the gold of an egg yolk. In the forest behind he sees the deeper green a vegetable gains when blanched. Lucien takes some comfort in knowing that this is the very sun that falls even now on his backyard at home, illuminating the ground for the chickens as they peck, bathes his sister Babette’s face as she pauses from unhanging the dry linens. Perhaps, as if hearing something, she turns and gazes long to the West. And it is good to know that, in the sun’s own time, he is only one half-day distant.
Lucien pushes in between two others and extends his arm to receive his cup, which is followed hard upon by Poutrincourt’s boy pouring brandy from a jug. Lucien is perhaps the only man who makes no noise at getting his. Some men supply a whispered joke, “Come, boy, don’t be so mean now.” Some loudly sigh and smile. When Fougeray de Vitre shouts a simple toast to the triple hierarchy of God, King, and Sieur, Lucien tilts some brandy onto his tongue and tastes it up through his nose. He will wait till the sensation passes before taking another taste. Those on either side of him throw the entirety of their cup back against their throats and as it goes down hot they cough.
Lucien joins in weakly as all the men chant Sieur Poutrincourt’s birthday praises. Looking already flush with drink, Monsieur Champlain calls waggishly for a speech. Sieur Poutrincourt is flush of face too but is too contained a man to concoct a speech, least of all about himself, so Monsieur Lescarbot performs one for him. Lescarbot loves to speak and relishes his own talent when he does so. He has the deep voice of a larger man but he is small, his tight body reminding Lucien of oars strapped hard together in the shape of a man, and though he always smiles he seems dangerous in the way some small men can. Speaking so well that Lucien suspects he has come prepared, Lescarbot begins with a fantastic anecdote about the nobleman’s very birth, and how the midwife grew uncontrollably amorous at the first sight of him. Lucien sees that the nobles have been making merry all day long, so raucous is their laughter. It isn’t often that noble laughter outshouts the rough kind of the regular men.
Lescarbot’s speech turns to serious praise, that New France could wish for no better soul to plant its first flag, et cetera, and while it might be true, Lucien looks for creatures in the clouds that tumble overhead, though down here in this valley there is not more than a whisper of air. Such it is when the wind comes from the north; come the hard winter, that wall of young mountains will prove a most kindly friend. No — small mountains are old mountains, he has learned this in his reading. Mountains don’t grow as trees do. They grow smaller, wearing away like Roman steps, losing perhaps a pebble-height each noble birthday. Lucien sees a hare, with ears that drag far behind him, as though with his ears pinched in a cook’s hand he still runs to escape. One ear separates and becomes its own dolphin-fish —
Lucien startles badly at the firing of the first cannon. He half heard the finale of Lescarbot’s speech, something about “the declaration of all cannon” because Port-Royal, and New France, was celebrating the birthday of none other than its first king. If any a man thought about this near-heresy it was blasted dead by the final shot. Lucien thinks he has witnessed the worst case of currying favour ever in his life. A man can truly shrink himself through trying to bolster another. Sieur Poutrincourt neither smiles nor moves as his eyes vainly try to penetrate cannon smoke to take in the bay. Lucien braces himself and lets his mouth hang open for the next shot. For some reason the ears hurt less if you give your head another hole.
LATER, THOUGH SUPPER’S bell has rung, a clutch of fellows including Lucien remain leaning against the storehouse wall. Two men smoke savages’ leaf, one in the foreshortened pipe he’d carved from the crotch of a root, and the other, Champdoré, from a more ornate affair received through private trading with savages to the south: the bowl is fashioned from an immense lobster claw, and one long claw-tip curls out bright pink in a rather elaborate flourish. Champdoré is proud of this device and will not lend it around. But Lucien will take the wooden pipe when offered him, as he hopes it will be. He has tried it before when the savages last came to barter skins and he likes it well enough, or rather it is one more different thing to tell his children about, should he ever be so blessed.
And at this thought of children his hair near stands on end, because such a miracle is suddenly possible, however much it flies beyond all thinking. Ndene. She is still all the miracle he needs to see. And he can see her so vividly at will: how, after a fortnight of placing himself in spots she frequented, suspecting she did the same; how, in the company of others they could only smile, though on one occasion behind the north wall quickly find and squeeze each other’s hands; how, only three days previous, she is laughing gently as she surprises him out of the trees! Her intention is clear, and marvellous, and there is no need — nor, it seems, time — for words. For so it is that her hand is on him, between his legs, feeling for what is there, when Lucien finds he needs must stop and he stays her hand. He has imagined just such a time, of course, and he has wanted nothing more — what then is this that freezes him? It seems that, rising up, thudding behind his eyes with his own blood, is the blurred whole of Scripture, its ensnarling words about sin without marriage. Also staying his hand firmly on hers is the sudden tempest, that blows inside him like wind, made up of combined indistinct echoes of Poutrincourt, and the King, and the gallows, and even of his own mother, and the one talk they had about the nature of this very thing that is upon him now, and his promise to her, one that he has kept.
Ndene’s first look is incomprehension. For indeed Lucien’s own bearing had countenanced this day — it had hoped for and asked for it. Her second look is anger. She gestures in question, and waits. He tries to explain, using the word God, which she knows, and also he makes clear that his own sagamore, Poutrincourt, does not want them to do this. It takes not a moment for Ndene to ask, and get his answer, as to what his desires are. In the end she cannot abide his hesitation. Again he tries to explain, and again she cannot find any sense in it. Why not do this thing he so dearly wishes to do? And in the attempts to explain, Lucien comes to question himself. And then for him a doorway through his wall of fear, or guilt, or whatever is its name, opens with these words, there is no sense in this inaction. Whereas his senses are full of her, of her and him; absent of any sense are the many words, and paper, and the past. There stands Ndene, laughing at him and shaking her head as if he is the dullest fool. Until he laughs too and goes to her and embraces her, because now he understands her freedom.
And then, as if their conversat
ion had not taken place, again she works like there is no time, all is haste. And soon all restraint’s undone. The very land tilts under his boots. Beneath harsh deer hide lies her impossible softness, her breasts, her round belly. Their clothes come only half off and work up into a knot and the cold is instantly on them, making them laugh grimly and hastening them on and serving as though to lift their desire higher. In his ear, her sounds are not so different than those he’s heard drifting from haylofts, from bedchambers, in St-Malo. It is a wondrous union and after, breathing, they meet eyes, and he knows he loves her exactly the same as she loves him, even for her smell of turned apples. Dressing, she points to the rising afternoon sliver of moon and counts seven fingers, and with these same fingers shows that she and her people will be trekking south. Only while walking back to the compound, whistling in amazement and stubbing his feet on roots, is Lucien stricken with the question of whether she meant seven days, weeks, or months. Or whether she returns in such a time, or it’s that long before she will be leaving. In the meantime he has searched for her and it seems that she has already indeed gone, which explained the haste. He has thought of little but Ndene for these three days now. He dearly hopes she didn’t mean months. Doesn’t a moon signal a month? God, he hopes not.
But in those three days he has listened with new interest to the constant moans of those stricken by the lack of a woman, as some of the men so claim to be, for more than a few are married. Dédé has bragged how he is going to take himself a savage woman and risk the penalties it will bring, and at mention of these penalties Lucien’s ears perk up further. The threatened punishments are vague and there is argument about them. First, there is the crime of relations with a woman not baptized, and then there is the crime of relations with a woman before marriage. That one is not allowed to marry an unbaptized woman seems not to contradict these crimes, nor provide an excuse to have sexual relations, though some of the men have argued this logic. Nor is there consensus on the penalties, which would certainly include flogging, but if one crime were added to the other, perhaps imprisonment as well. Lucien’s stomach fell when Fabrice, who does not exaggerate, claimed that in Hochelaga a man was hanged for it, but perhaps only because he had forced himself on the savage, and she was the young daughter of a sagamore, or a sagamore’s niece, but in any case the severity of the penalty had to do with quelling the anger of the neighbouring tribe, which numbered in the hundreds. Some men claimed that any taking of a savage woman means, at the very least, a voyage to France in chains. It seems that much would depend upon the priest, who would identify the sin, and then it would fall to Sieur Poutrincourt, who would decide on the punishment. Some men have sneered that relations with a savage would not be considered human, but bestial, and not merit mention beyond dismissal and disgust.
Lucien scratches the back of his neck waiting for Simon to refill the pipe. He pictures Ndene again, and the small meadow she knew of (how well? he is beginning to wonder), sheltered on two sides by mossy rocks, her eyes, her smile before, and then after, and the quieter way the second smile included him. He knows that, if she comes to him again, he will not care about men’s laws. And if any man or priest tries to tell him of God’s laws against Ndene, or against them together in the meadow — he won’t listen because naught in it will be true.
Lucien feels emboldened when the pipe is passed to him. Pulling in a lungful of smoke, he tries a savage trick, which is to blow the smoke out from his nose. He didn’t think he could and is surprised at how easy it is. One of the men spots him and calls, “Lucien!” and the rest look his way just as two rich streams pour out, fully like a dragon. The effect is to bring water to his eyes. He doesn’t cough but his nose burns and then he has to go hands on knees as a whirlpool of sense overtakes him, worse than the day of seasickness he survived. His nose chokes up with snot. The men laugh and then question him. Lucien simply says, shaking his head, “I’ll not do that again.” Amazingly enough, two more men try the same trick, and succeed, with the same result. The second man, Henri, lurches unsteadily around a corner and vomits, but his head was also more filled with wine. The robust Dédé calls in a foul woman’s voice to ask Henri if he would care for some more leaf.
“I am glad,” says none other than Monsieur Samuel Champlain, who takes a turn at the pipe, exhaling gently out of his mouth, “that young Lucien did not instead shoot a lead ball into his brain. We would now have three less men!”
The men laugh politely. All can tell that Monsieur Champlain is not given to wit. But he is standing out here with them, the regular men, drinking from the common cask, and they appreciate this. Lucien thinks that the cook Bonneville, though, appears to be in cahoots with Simon to top the nobleman with wine and watch him grow foolish. Lucien has seen the two trade eyes, and Bonneville raise his brows in all innocence as he brings the jug of wine to Champlain’s cup. The nobleman, as if ashamed to be slow of thirst, drinks off his cup so that there will be some room into which Bonneville can pour. And then Bonneville and Simon have looks again.
“Lucien?”
The mapmaker is addressing him alone.
“Sir?”
“Like this. As in all first voyages, at first make small.”
Lucien watches Champlain draw moderately from the pipe, take the smoke not so deep into his body, and then blow two faint streams from his nose.
“We need not be as savages in this,” he says when his nose ceases its blow. All have seen the savages hereabouts commonly try to best each other not just in wrestling and eating and running but also in heartiest smoking. Lucien wonders if indeed it is this very smoking that could have given rise to the rumour of dragons in this new world — later disclaimed by Cartier — but Lucien won’t let himself ask this of the noble. It is something he can ask Ndene.
Lucien notes that Monsieur Champlain is with them and not at the birthday feast, to which the regular men are not invited. Standing where they are they can hear the nobles bellowing at table. Worse, they can smell the joint of fresh venison. Lucien thinks he can detect a sauce made of berries. That is, he thought so before he injured his nose with smoke.
And there is no doubting that Samuel Champlain is a famous man. He was navigator on early voyages and he has had his own command. He has been up the great Canada River twice and is known to the great sagamores there. He has killed savages with an arquebus. He has seen creatures and wonders untold. He has a volume of journals and maps published and well read. He has thrice been received by King Henri. Yet he stands here with men who will never in their lives see let alone speak to a king. Still flush with wine — he has twice apologized for being drunk, though he isn’t very — Champlain now does most of the talking. Indeed, the men want it so.
“And yes there have been storms that have taken lives offshore here. Well, off the great banks. Mostly Basque lives. I don’t know why the Basque so stubbornly stay on the water. But it’s not the storms, it’s the lack of wind that kills on the banks. How?”
The men know how. They know these stories but they allow the man his rhetoric.
“Fog. Fog, shielding mountains of ice from man’s eye. To strike an iceberg is to strike a continent. It does not move. What moves are the planks of your bow. What moves is the spine of your keel. Your only hope is for the ice to own an overhang, a ledge — and many of them do, the water being warmer than the air — that first strikes you above waterline. Then you have some small chance of repair . . .”
Lucien watches Champlain. Compared to the others, this noble seems not so aware of his face — his moustaches and hair are often loose. Perhaps, so much at sea, he lets himself be windblown on land as well. Lucien knows, as do all the men, that this noble is not so high-born — they can see this not just in his bearing but in the other nobles’ regard of him. Lucien sees in their treatment a chance to vent their jealousy, especially Lescarbot, who has hardly ventured outside of Paris and who works the hardest not to show his fear, generally with an ornate humming of tunes. Still, Lucien cannot tell
whether Champlain’s slightly tawdry presentation stems from not knowing or from not caring. This evening, for instance, he wears a thing new and peculiar — strung on twined hemp after the savage fashion, but looking like a child might do it, a little necklace made of black seabird bills. It appears as though the twine were strung randomly through either of the two nostrils but not both, so the hang is not even and the assemblage looks bumpy and ajumble, even silly; and if one thing can be said for savage work, it is always even and true, with the sizes of fang, or claw graduated like pearls. He seems an odd man to be otherwise expert at the precise fitting of measures and lines upon a page.
The mapmaker continues to talk, much like a man who needs to. But the men are eager to hear, even stories they have heard before. One story that has most affected Lucien, and affects him still, is of Sable Island. He first heard it, in part, years ago in St-Malo, but Monsieur Champlain has landed on the island himself, and knows its qualities, and so he fills the story with details that give it life for Lucien. For instance: not a tree stands on Sable Island though it is forty miles in length. At most a mile in breadth, it is one long ridge of sand. It has grass and some shrub. It sits two hundred miles off the coast of New France, at the height of the Strait of Canso. Surf pounds it from the east. The wind there does not stop and the grass stands up straight but a few days of the year. Nine years ago, an expedition similar to theirs, to monopolize the fur trade and settle New France, was bankrupt even as it began. The captain of the ship, informed of this and infuriated that he might not be paid, dropped twenty men, six horses, and twenty hogs upon Sable Island. The nobleman in charge (who Monsieur Champlain out of delicacy would not name, though Lucien recalls it to be a Monsieur Caron) instructed these unfortunate men to found a way station to replenish ships making the voyage to New France. He promised a ship would call for them in a year’s time. But Caron was imprisoned back in St-Malo and for whatever reason no ship was sent to Sable Island for four years. The ship arrived to find six of the twenty still alive. Only two had died of the scurve. The rest, said Champlain, “had such disagreements that they cut each other’s throats.”