by Bill Gaston
This evening the foul man’s plan is more brilliant still: below them, further covering the beast’s noise, rise the laughter and song of a feast that has grown louder and more thoughtless with the hours.
Lucien has turned his head back away, but he hears the drunken mumble:
“O your bitch she’s a shiny bug.”
He feels the hand, damp and thick as a haunch, press cruelly on the back of his neck. It doesn’t close off his breathing, but it hurts enough and is a warning. He hears:
“You shut up.”
Another paw flings off the blanket and begins to rip down his breeches. The cold air assaults him first, his legs especially, adding rudely to their ache. But Lucien knows that is nothing. What has happened so far is nothing. He wonders who is alive still in the chimney box, and if they might hear him if he shouted words. Or if they would move, or could move, if they heard. Or if they’d care, or if they weren’t already familiar themselves with what is about to happen to him. Now he hears:
“I’ll have her through your back.”
The hand comes off his neck but is replaced with the full weight of the fellow lying on the length of him, and thrashing, cleaving Lucien’s legs apart, trying for purchase, moving quick as a devil. Lucien feels several ribs bend, and break. A nether pain begins, and he knows it’s but the beginnings of this pain, and he hears:
“I am fucking her now.”
But then, through his fright and thirsting for breath, he hears confused commotion, and shouts, and now Dédé has leapt off him, and Lucien sees he has also been pulled, and now two men hold him down in a sitting position, and another — it is Samuel Champlain — stands apart from the scene, breathing fiercely through his widened nose, his small sabre out, looking like he wants to use it. At his feet, a good pewter plate, heaped with the oddest family of foodstuffs, as well as a goblet that steams with spice. Lucien can smell clove.
Monsieur Champlain had come up here to see him fed.
SAMUEL SITS PONDERING his sketches, unable to add artful ink to them, full as he is with good cheer. Also, reveries stay his pen. It is a fortnight now since the first celebration.
Lescarbot’s night went well, despite the lawyer taking every opportunity to describe, in verse, each dish as it got carried to table. But there was a fine beaver tail made in a pie, with such addition of garlic and salt and butter that it could have been as exquisite as aspic of escargots. And he introduced a right clever song, to be sung in rounds, as an addendum to his Neptune play, which he did recomprise. He challenged the men to compose lyrics in the very moment, right where they sat. But since wine makes many different creatures at table, the lyrics shouted out were often leagues apart in meaning from the line that preceded it, or too rough-hewn. In any case, Lescarbot enjoyed playing judge, or in truth emperor, with his thumb up or, more frequently, thumb down, and the lyric was killed.
Following that, Ricou’s feast was worthy too, particularly the cranberry marmalade that did well to overcrow the moose kidneys and tripe, the bulk of which was passed out of the dining room and into the other rooms where it seems every savage in the territory now awaits a morsel. But the evening settled into diligent labour at getting Lescarbot’s song well turned out, and at last they agreed to entitle it “Without Doubt Mermaids Heed This Our Song.” No singer, Samuel stood in back and aimed soft moans toward his feet. But he finds it both ennobling and fun to build a good song together.
Next, the apothecary d’Amboisee, whom Samuel understands was passed the steward’s collar as an act of compassion and intelligence, for “never fall idle, never go mad,” as is said. The spitted otter was delicious, its crust of burnt herbs not the medicinal abomination some had feared. And the lobster crème that began the evening was the perfect goad to their healthful appetites. The lone curious spice the apothecary added to the affair was his request — more a command, truly, and lacking in any mirth at all, with nary a wink from him — that all men be served according to height, from tallest and then next tallest, et cetera, which was a lunacy bland enough but lunacy all the same. Samuel knew it also threatened their appetites by bringing too clearly to their minds the absence of the towering Dédé, who otherwise would have, for the first time in his life, been served first, before nobility. But the monster is in Poutrincourt’s gaol for the rest of his stay here.
This same Sieur, whom the men have perhaps been too shy to ask and encollar, has finally tonight, through waving comically at Gagne, making his availability known, received the red collar, and tomorrow will bestow his feast. It is rumoured that in the morning he will perform his own hunting, accompanied by a small party of Mi’qmah.
To date, Fougeray de Vitre has supplied a night, as has Champdoré and it seems any man of means amongst them, those who have a knife to trade for a rare haunch. But the collar will circulate the stewardship throughout the common men too, as they have been told that good cheer is not necessarily of any expense at all, but can come of their own labour at hunting, or favours for the savages. And all they needs must do is put forth some effort at leading the toasts, and song.
He sees he has as good as ruined a sketch of the fields and forest trees up the River Eel, so he flips the sheet to write on its back. His mood is again unlike that of wanting to record events in his ship’s log. He moves the feather on his lips for more of its sweet tickle. He will write his true thoughts down, much like an assessment of damage done by a storm, and of progress made despite it.
21 janvier 1607 (to burn)
IT GOES WELL ENOUGH. We are depleting our good wine, and much of our spice, not to mention a goodly number of knives, blankets, and nails in exchange for the best and freshest and hardest-to-procure game, and with insistence of an exact day of deliverance to us — even so, Poutrincourt and the others would not for a moment argue that the Order of Good Cheer is not a godsend for its remarkable lifting of our common humour. Not to mention our health, in particular those with the scurve.
I confess that I did very much savour the time when Poutrincourt himself remarked upon their changes: their skin gaining back robust colour and their night noises ceasing, and then their blackmouth losing its odour and then beginning, after the bad flesh fell out, to heal instead of fester anew. I waited until I was certain these changes were good ones and true, and only then did I confess to the Sieur to having secreted food — the freshest, and the organs especially, and broth most rife with herbs — to their bedsides each day and each night. At first Poutrincourt answered with thoughtful silence, and Lescarbot snorted, though warily, while watching the Sieur, and then the Sieur said, “It’s likely good, then.” So dull and vague a statement was this I could take it to mean permission at least to continue the medicine. In any case, Bonneville is now pleased he need no longer prepare plates in secret, this having made him anxious because, though he was carrying out my orders, my rank is not the highest.
I have instructed poor d’Amboise to cease his struggles in the sickroom. The apothecary’s fumigations of vinegar brought forth only needless tears. The elaborate poultices of bread grated and mixed with strong powdered lead caused only a new kind of festering to the leg sores, wounds not pacified but made more angry; plus it appeared to make the men fall stupid. Though it marked his failure, d’Amboise appeared relieved to be released from this duty.
The beast Dédé and the good carpenter Lucien are both charged with crimes against God, and confined to their separate rooms within the compound. After Poutrincourt made this most obscure decree, and saw me linger while the other men left, he read what was on my face and held his palm up against me speaking. He told me, simply, that he acted solely on what had been witnessed and that upon our regaining France in summer there would be a fitting trial, and innocence would come out, if indeed any existed. I believe this is when I raised my voice at him, but before three words were out he shouted, and I held my tongue. I know that his logic lies in the carpenter not defending himself against his assailant, not even to voice his displeasure. I suspect he
knows full well that Lucien is innocent of the crime. Perhaps he is using this facsimile of a crime to put a stamp of greater certainty on the other crime, of loving a savage. Or, perhaps something in Poutrincourt’s ordinary good nature can simply not fathom, cannot bring to mind or to words, that any man could take carnal knowledge of another man who lay that sickly and that near death. Perhaps to admit Lucien’s innocence would also be to admit the awful truth about Dédé, whose life is one of God’s mysteries.
But the men know, of course, what we stupid nobles do not know, or will not know. Though it sorrows my soul that I cannot be seen to disagree with the Sieur’s censure, the regular men visit Lucien frequently with gossip and songs, and once, I’ve been told, they put on a play for him, rehearsing it for the feast later that evening. They also, I believe, bring small treasures from his girl, one of them a bone ornament he wears openly, that is, defiantly, from around his throat. (Perhaps some proof that the Sieur knows him innocent is that Dédé is by comparison kept shunned in his own especial gaol, the sail room, where he waits patiently. What is left of his hair is apparently becoming grey, a sure sign of some extreme unease.)
I myself informed Lucien of the Sieur’s decree — and that he is now twice confined — and at this redundancy Lucien weakly though bitterly smiled, and his chest buckled in what was part laughter, part spasm, for he is not yet well. But nearly so. Yes, nearly so, for that is what I climbed the stairs to see, and that is cause for joy. If not his, then at least mine.
The Party
ANDY RATTLED OPEN the old French door to his mudroom, reached in and squeezed a pine bough to feel the needles for dryness. They felt as turgid with sap as ever. The room smelled like a version of his father’s aftershave. Did anyone still use aftershave? Online yesterday he’d learned that this was a kind of white pine, which he thought an interesting coincidence. It was a broth made of white pine needles, annedda, that Champlain had seen cure scurvy in Quebec but couldn’t find in Port Royal.
In any case the needles were for smoking the mussels tonight — Jesus, his party was tonight — and the mudroom was a three-dimensional maze of boughs, impossible to walk through. He’d chainsawed them off his blown-down tree and it was clear that even if the needles shrank and shrank he’d have far more than needed. He’d got carried away with the fun of bucking the branches. With the upright root-ball clinging to the edge of his yard and the tree aiming down, its tip resting on the gravel beach, he’d balanced himself on the trunk as he sawed off the big bottom branches first and then gradually scaled down the tree, or actually up, taking off branch after branch, climbing the tree upside down, as it were, until, near the tip, he jumped to the gravel. What he now had, besides all the branches to haul, was a cool ladder back up to his yard, an apparatus he would have loved playing on as a boy. He wondered who he knew with kids the right age to enjoy such a toy, and couldn’t think of anyone.
At his feet, tucked just inside the mudroom, was the big blue cooler. Leonard’s scrawled note lay on the lid: Went to Terrace for moose, maybe a fish. Andy lifted the lid again to appreciate, under melting crushed ice, the biggest mussels he’d ever seen.
From down the hall he heard Laura’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Amelia, flush the toilet, a sound he found a little thrilling, except he was afraid of her. It was Amelia’s fault that, all day, his world felt off-kilter. It was almost a visual thing. Even here in his house the space between objects felt tilted, iffy. Her presence made him think of “time out of joint.” You feel like you might fall on your face, but you don’t. It was probably just graveyard shift and sleeplessness. If you kept a dog awake four days it would die. He had probably only a bit of that. Tibetans, they had a feeling they called diagonal-line hell — what would that be like?
Over two days he’d spent more time with Amelia than her mother. The day after Laura’s arrival, while she worked at death certificates and funeral arrangements, he’d ferried over again to greet Amelia this time, and it was just one more oddity among many lately, welcoming this younger version of Laura. She’d said “nice car” climbing into the Mustang, and the way she said it made Andy like his car a little less. He had to keep himself from staring as he tried to parse her father’s features from her mother’s. She was stunning, truly, in a classic feline way. The father must have been kind of pretty himself, Slavic or even Asian, or at least a Johnny Depp. In any case great cheekbones and jaw. He talked with her as casually as he could; she seemed a typical teenager. She let slip that she was missing a skiing holiday with friends, and getting back to Vancouver only a day before the start of term was the shits too. He sussed that she hadn’t been fond of her grandmother and was here more out of duty to her mother.
This morning they’d been at the funeral together, Amelia seated between Laura and Andy. It was just the way they ended up in the row. Andy’s mother and Marie Schultz’s other friends comprised the row behind them, and Andy could smell their intense perfumes wafting at him due to two large fans at the back (he had the grisly thought that these fans were to drive any waft-of-body away from the audience), and he wondered if he wasn’t becoming sensitive to chemical scent, as people apparently were. He’d read that most perfumes and deodorants now used a highly allergenic enhancer chemical that helped fragrance knife into the olfactory nerves more efficiently, saving a company money.
It was an open-casket affair, and while most people lined up to peer in, or pat a folded hand, or bend to kiss, Andy was happy to sit and wait it out. He could see her well enough from there, her auburn hair with its new ’do, the coffin’s white satin lining puffed out like heaven’s own comforts. Mrs. Schultz was made up to barely resemble herself. In fact Andy jerked awake staring at that face, and an odd vision he’d been enjoying of her. Perhaps it was the tan makeup, but in death she looked vaguely Native, and in his vision Andy saw three hummingbirds tied with black thread to her hair. He’d read about this rare spectacle, of a Haida chief’s favoured wife entering a ceremony so adorned, making a once-in-a-decade splash with this highest peak of fashion. And it was the best ornament, these three tethered hummingbirds —three seemed perfect. He could almost see the birds buzzing, straining along the farthest arc of their tether, and he could hear the three-part thrumming, a beautiful little chaos of orderly sound, and he almost liked Marie Schultz now because of it. He could admit she’d had a nobility about her. Though he did note that, on either side of him, neither Laura nor Amelia was crying.
For reasons she kept to herself, Amelia refused to go to the graveyard for the burial, telling her mother, “I just can’t do it,” and Andy said he was fine with hanging around with her till after.
So he asked if Amelia wanted to see some sights and she said sure. First he drove her up to the hospital grounds for the view (it was momentarily odd because he could see the hearse and funeral procession moving east through town, though he didn’t point this out to her). He indicated the various islands, and the directions things lay, like the airport, and Japan, and the Charlottes if you could see their mountains through the mist. Amelia stood hunched overdramatically in what was barely rain, nodding dully, her gaze more inward than out. So they drove back downtown to do the waterfront.
They trod the short boardwalk in front of the tourism building, Andy pointing out the last fish plant — a crab cannery — the cruise-ship dock, the bald-eagle tree, and the long slips where cruising billionaires tied their three-storey yachts. As her eyes followed his knowledgeable pointing arm, he felt content with his city and proud to be this closely linked to such a beautiful young person. He wondered if it would feel much different being her father.
“What are you taking at UBC?”
“Um. I’m not exactly majoring yet, but I think environmental studies.”
“Ah.” That was a program? He flicked his hand out at the water. “Out just past those islands,” Andy told her, “they made one of the first discoveries of ‘deep ecology.’ Know about that?” When her silence told him she didn’t, he told her how thes
e waters once swarmed with sea otters, wiped out two hundred years ago to make hats for Paris and Moscow. The otters lived in the vast kelp beds that, from here to San Francisco, also protected the beaches from surf. Then the strangest thing happened — when the otters went, the kelp disappeared too! Then the newly pounding surf washed the sand away. The beaches could no longer launch canoes, so that was it for lots of villages. Plus, with no kelp, the herring couldn’t spawn, so they left, then the salmon did too. Some figured it was evil magic, but the scientists who came found that the kelp had been eaten by a suddenly huge population of sea urchin. The otter had been the sea urchins’ only predator. “It’s a funny logic,” Andy said. “If you make otter hats, the sand washes away and villages die!”
Amelia had half turned from him and might have stopped listening, so Andy ceased stabbing in the direction of the outer islands where all of this was discovered. Maybe she felt lectured to. Maybe she owned a fur hat.
He wanted to joke to her, So if they keep shipping grapes up from Chile, would his backyard fall into the sea?
He didn’t tell her about the mystical Queen Charlottes out there too, untouched by the last ice age, an unglaciated refugium for animals found nowhere else — he understood that this was simply more stuff he’d been saving up for Laura, stuff he’d read, since she’d been gone, about their home.