by Mike Blakely
“I haven’t seen him in two days,” Jean answered. “He keeps himself in his quarters. I was afraid he had taken the fever.”
“It is not the fever. It is the madness. Do you know what he does in there, Jean? While all around him is death and decay, while the sick moan, plagued by boils and lice? While our clothes fall away from us in tatters? While savages howl about us in the night? Do you know what he does?”
“No,” Jean said.
“He is writing a play. A play!”
Jean thought perhaps it was Goupil who had gone mad, until the next day, when the Sieur de La Salle emerged from his quarters and announced that the new storehouse would be a playhouse instead.
Rehearsals began. La Salle assigned roles in the play he had authored to members of the colony. The Sieur de La Sablonniere, being the only member of the colony with theatrical experience, took the lead roll of Jason. There was a witch in the play, to be portrayed by La Salle’s valet, Minime. Minime was made to wear a woman’s dress for this role and would prance about effeminately behind La Salle’s back, disrupting rehearsals.
One day, Jean was watching as the playwright caught his valet in this foolishness and began to beat him with a length of cane such as the troupe was using to construct the backdrop of the stage. As he flogged Minime mercilessly, the valet began to shout, “More! More! Yes! Harder! Good!” in the manner of the banned convulsionaries. La Salle was so enraged that he thrashed Minime until the cane was bloody.
On another day, Jean went to the smokehouse to add green wood to the fire and heard strange noises when he entered. Peering around a rack hung with buffalo carcasses curing for the winter, he saw a bald man named Henri Casaubon chastising a young woman named Madeleine with blows from a whip. Jean knew the man as a convulsionary, but never Madeleine, whom Jean considered a follower of Father Membre. Now her breasts and buttocks were bare, and she asked for more abuse as the man pinched the nipples of her breasts and whipped her buttocks. Then, as Jean watched from hiding, the bald man dropped his trousers and mounted the woman as if they both were dogs.
Bursting out of the smokehouse, he ran headlong into the dark, out beyond the protective palisades of the fort, though he knew painted savages might very well be waiting to capture or kill him there. He hid himself in a shadow, so confused and afraid of what he had seen that he could not think of telling it to anyone, not even Goupil nor Father Membre.
He could still hear the moans of the dying from where he hid. Then suddenly, the howl of natives arose from the woods, in their way of mimicking wolves and owls, and Jean knew he must remain hidden until dawn, or be captured. He could smell the rank air of the shallow graves in the cemetery. He was lost, never to know civilization again. The boats were all sunk. His commander had gone mad. The colonists—all of them as far as he knew—were secretly engaging in perverse mockeries of the Christian faith. The horror of the place called Fort St. Louis fell in on young Jean that night. But the worst was yet to come.
On New Year’s Day, 1687, La Salle’s troupe of actors performed his play. After all these years, Jean could not remember the title of the play, nor the plot, if indeed it had possessed one. He remembered only two characters: Jason, played by the Sieur de La Sablonniere, and the witch, played by Minime. The morning of the play, the Sieur de La Sablonniere awoke very ill with a high fever. La Salle insisted that he must perform anyway, though the man could barely stand.
Only one scene from the play remained in Jean’s mind through all his trials since that day. In it, the witch, played by Minime, was to cut the throat of Jason, played by the ailing Sieur de La Sablonniere. Then, the witch was to bring Jason back to life by pouring a magical potion on his wound. This murder of Jason was to be performed with the backs of the actors to the audience. Otherwise, the spectators would notice the lack of blood from the neck wound, diminishing the dramatic effect.
When the witch appeared, many of the audience members around Jean gasped, or drew back in fear, so successful was Minime in his portrayal. Few of the colonists had ever seen a play, other than the kind performed by rank street actors. Jean noticed that in contrast to Minime’s spirited performance, the Sieur de La Sablonniere was so weak from the fever that his lines could barely be heard.
And so the audience sat in transfixion as Minime’s witch stalked up behind the protagonist, grabbed him, and brandished the knife. One colonist bolted from his seat in fear that the whole thing was real, that Sablonniere would be sacrificed since he was probably dying anyway. Now Minime turned Sablonniere away from the audience and feigned the stroke of the knife across Jason’s throat with such a convincing flourish that women screamed and men gasped. Sablonniere found his task of collapsing on stage so natural in his weakened state that he appeared truly dead. Minime tossed the knife aside and reached for his next prop, a bowl of the magical elixir. This he poured across the hidden wound of Jason and performed sundry witchlike incantations over the corpse.
When Sablonniere stirred, Jean L’Archeveque heard commotion and felt nervous movement all around him. The poor sickened actor was so weak from fever that his resurrection seemed most convincing. He drew himself laboriously to his feet, and staggered with his head bowed forward. One superstitious woman ran from the playhouse at this moment, another began to sob in fear. About half the members of the audience rose from the seats and seemed on the verge of bolting.
La Salle, who had been sitting in the front row with his script, prompting the amateur thespians, turned his back on the stage to admonish those in the crowd who would interrupt the performance with their silly superstitious outbursts. It was at this moment, with months of fear and despair poised to fall off the shoulders of the beleaguered colonists, that the treacherous Minime strayed from La Salle’s script. He shrieked—utterly screaming his lungs out—and began to twitch on stage. All through the audience, screams and convulsionary antics erupted with the suddenness of a lightning bolt. The bald man, Henri Casaubon, whom Jean had seen mount Madeleine in the smokehouse, leapt from the audience to the stage, and people were jostled against one another.
Feeling a sudden instinctive dread, Jean tried to escape the playhouse, but everyone was moving at once. Someone convulsing on the floor grabbed Jean’s leg as he tried to step over. He caught glimpses as the room seemed to spin around him: Minime twisting profanely on stage, his mouth frothing; the Sieur de La Sablonniere pulling Minime’s knife from a wound in his stomach where it had been plunged by Henri Casaubon; La Salle falling forward as someone struck him on the back of the head with a playhouse stool.
Then Jean saw Goupil. Poor Goupil, the kind mapmaker, whose right arm was curling strangely around on itself, whose mouth was gobbling at something nonexistent, whose neck was twisting piteously, whose eyes were rolling back as he fell across the prone body of a convulsionary. Poor Goupil, who had thought himself cured of the terrible falling sickness now awakened by this horrid spectacle in this strange land of death and misery.
Jean kicked himself free. He saw Father Membre trying to help Goupil, but someone knocked the priest down with a pole. Jean fought his way through the madness—women baring their breasts, lifting their skirts, begging for whippings; men grinning as they used pieces of cane from the backdrop to flog those who convulsed at their feet; stools and theatrical props flying everywhere across the playhouse. Jean struck the crazed convulsionaries aside and reached Father Membre, pulling him to his feet.
“We must help Goupil,” the father said, his face all bloody. “He swallows his tongue in the clutches of his fits.”
Together, they reached Goupil and dragged him aside. Membre knew how to help the mapmaker, prying his jaws apart with a stick and forcing his hand in Goupil’s mouth to keep the tongue from blocking Goupil’s windpipe. Jean stood guard with a leg broken from a stool as Membre tended the fallen mapmaker.
Six colonists deserted the fort that day, preferring to trust their luck to the mercies of savages. The Sieur de La Sablonniere died a few days later, of his wo
und, or the fever, or both. Somehow, La Salle escaped assassination in the playhouse. Oddly, he made no mention of the thwarted theatrical production after the disaster, made no attempt to punish any malefactor’s behavior. Instead, he announced his intention to make a new overland trek. He would take half of the surviving fifty colonists, leaving the weakest members at the fort. He would strike out to the northeast. His destination: Canada.
Canada! The very idea made Jean L’Archeveque’s head ache. La Salle had not even been able to find the Messipe to the northeast, much less follow it for league after league through hundreds of nations of savages to the far-off and fabled outposts of Canada! Yet, when Jean was ordered to join the overland expedition, he secretly rejoiced. He would prefer even death in the wilderness to life in this twisted aberration of civilized society called Fort St. Louis, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in the land the Spanish called Tejas, after one of the nations of savages who lived there.
The day of departure from Fort St. Louis was a day of heart-wrenching sadness, for Jean and Goupil had to leave their friend, Father Membre. He was to stay behind to care for the sick and dying at the fort while the healthiest colonists made the journey with La Salle.
Goupil embraced the priest and said, “We will send relief by sea the moment we reach Canada.”
Membre smiled sadly. “You mustn’t make such grand promises, my friend. Send only your prayers. That is all I ask of you, and all I can promise in return. Go in faith.”
What followed were two months of marching through landscapes of open plains, woods, marshes, hills, and swamps; crossing countless flooded rivers; hacking through canebrakes and thickets of underbrush. Rain chilled the men day and night, and turned the whole wild world to mud.
Jean, like the others, possessed only bits and pieces of clothing. His pants were from his home in Petit-Goave, now patched liberally on the knees and seat with deer skin. His shirt was fashioned from salvaged sailcloth. His shoes were raw buffalo hide, which he was obliged to keep forever wet if he did not want them to harden around his feet like iron.
There were days when the rain fell too unrelentingly to allow travel. On such days, Jean would shiver under the shelter of a raw buffalo hide. He would sit there and watch the horses steam—the only two horses left to La Salle’s great expedition.
On good days, the party would make as many as twelve leagues, though seven was closer to the average. Some days were pleasantly passed over oak-studded plains teeming with buffalo, antelope, and deer. But spells of warm and dry weather seldom lasted more than a few days.
The Frenchmen encountered many villages of savages as they journeyed slowly northeast. Most treated the sojourners with astonishment and reverence, literally embracing them as they entered the villages. The cottages of these people resembled ovens to Jean, each made of poles stuck in the ground and bent inward to form a dome, then covered with buffalo hides.
Often, the savages mistook their pale-skinned visitors for gods or spirits. They would bring their sick and wounded to the Frenchmen and the Sieur de La Salle would have his men do what they could for the ailing natives.
They came upon one village that the Sieur de La Salle had visited on his previous journey only to find the inhabitants nearly decimated by the fever. The suffering and dying was like that of Fort St. Louis, and cast Jean into a somber frame of mind.
Goupil shared the mood. “So many heathens ushered into eternity with souls unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven,” he said looking back on the village the day the party left. “The thought fills my heart with anguish.”
“What will happen to their souls?” Jean asked.
“They will drift forever in oblivion, if indeed they do not roast eternally in the fires of perdition. Poor, wretched, savage heathens.”
Next, they came to a village of people they named Weepers, for the people sobbed with joy when the Frenchmen arrived, as if they had been awaited for generations. Only after their eyes had run dry of tears did the Weepers present a wounded man who had been shot with an arrow in battle, asking that the travelers cure him. The Sieur de La Salle, who had some surgical instruments with him, cut and probed in the man’s chest and finally extracted the flint arrowhead. When the warrior recovered, the Frenchmen found many other sick or lame Weepers desiring cures.
The Sieur de La Salle had insisted upon bringing the worst troublemakers of the colony with him on this search for far-off Canada, to prevent them from further corrupting Fort St. Louis in his absence. Chief among them were Henri Casaubon, the bald convulsionary who had escaped punishment for stabbing Sablonniere during the play, and Minime, the valet. These two convinced the gullible savages that they were healers of great power. They would blow upon the sick or wounded or make the sign of the cross over them to cure them. Oddly enough, these useless procedures greatly impressed the savages to the point that some actually believed they had been cured, and they would follow the posturing healers around the village, begging cures.
“The heresy!” Goupil hissed. “They make the sign of the cross! Look at Minime and Casaubon, painted like savages!”
“Why does the Sieur de La Salle let them go on with such a charade?” Jean asked. “They should be stopped.”
“Yes, they should be, my young friend, but the Sieur de La Salle has lost his will to lead. He punishes anyone only when he himself feels morose or angry. He sits all day and converses in signs with the Weepers, asking time and time again about his wretched River Messipe, of which they know nothing, while Minime and Casaubon gain more and more followers among the savages.”
“Goupil,” Jean said, lowering his voice, “Minime and Casaubon have more followers among the savages than the Sieur de La Salle has among Frenchmen.”
“Yes, my young friend. I am aware of the danger. Even among Frenchmen, there are many malcontents who follow Minime and Casaubon. Only the officers and a few others remain loyal to La Salle. I fear for us all.”
Many of the Weepers followed the explorers on to the next village. With the false healers leading them, the Weepers demanded payment from the village in exchange for cures, and took such payment by force from the lodges of the inhabitants, virtually sacking the village. Now, the inhabitants of this village followed the crusade on to the next, to plunder it in turn, thus recouping their losses. In this manner, the ranks of savages swelled, and each village encountered was ransacked, while La Salle looked on helplessly.
After a month of such travel, the Frenchmen came upon a village whose chief was none other than the Sieur d’Autray, who had deserted the year before. Jean was appalled to see that d’Autray had gone so mad among these savages that he had forgotten he had ever been a Christian. He could not speak French, nor did he recognize any of his former friends. His face and arms were streaked with horrible tattoos. The power he wielded over the natives, however, was absolute, and this impressed Jean.
“He has taken that squaw as his wife!” Goupil hissed in disgust. “She hasn’t the shame to cover her breasts! The flirtatious manner of these wretched heathen women makes me ill. Who can say why d’Autray would risk his immortal soul for such a life? Neither shall you make marriages with heathens or bow down to their gods!”
After leaving d’Autray’s village, three men deserted, and Jean believed these three had left to take up wives among the savages and become chiefs, as d’Autray had. Then one morning, the Frenchmen awoke to find all of the savage followers of Minime and Casaubon gone, though the two healers themselves remained in camp. This had astonished Jean at the time, but now, looking back on it, he realized that the natives had sensed the division among the Frenchmen and knew only violence could follow.
By this time, Jean and Goupil had begun to think of the members of the expedition in terms of two rival parties: La Salle’s “Loyals” and the “Malcontents” of Minime and Casaubon.
“I suppose we are Loyals,” Jean said.
“No. We must remain neutral as long as possible. If forced to choose, I must serve La Salle,
as I have these twenty years.”
“Then, so will I.”
“No, boy. If we come to violence, you must run and hide in the forest. Wait and see which party emerges the victor. If the Loyals win, rejoin the party. If the Malcontents gain power, you must trust your luck among the savages. Perhaps you can return to Father Membre at Fort St. Louis. Perhaps you can find the outposts that the Spaniards maintain in the west.”
“But, we are at war with the Spaniards.”
“We are at war with ourselves!” Goupil snapped. “I am sorry,” he said, rubbing his head as he glanced around. “You are young. The Spaniards will have mercy on you. Tell them how we have suffered, and they will have pity on you.”
Goupil made Jean promise he would do this.
For two more weeks the Frenchmen trudged northeast. They came to a village of natives who laughed at La Salle when he asked about the River Messipe. The weather warmed, green buds and grasses began to sprout, but mosquitos tormented the men day and night. La Salle seldom spoke to the men, and morale sank ever deeper. The division between Loyals and Malcontents worsened.
Coming to a large and beautiful valley carved by a river of red water, the explorers camped for a few days. Jean was surprised to learn that La Salle had been to this place on his expedition of the previous year, naming it the River of Canoes. He had cached some beans and corn in a hollow tree a few leagues away. Accordingly, the explorer sent a party to retrieve the goods. The party included Jean and Goupil along with three known Malcontents: Minime, Casaubon, and a German, named Hein.
“La Salle is testing us,” Goupil whispered. “He sends us out with these Malcontents to determine whether or not we will remain loyal.”