Bride of New France (14 page)

The younger Jesuit emerges from behind his curtain also, but instead of joining his superior, he makes his way to the stern to eat with the soldiers and indentured servants in the hold. One of the men says to him, “Come and join us, Père, for our humble meal. You’ll do well with the Savages, getting your practice on the mush. Best to start training now at leaving the luxuries behind.”

The passengers are seated on the floor planks according to region and kinship. The soldiers and the three-year men, hired to clear the land in the colony, sit at the stern; the girls from the Salpêtrière and the other
filles à marier
from Normandie sit in the bow with the ship’s cannons. Between the single men and women are the four married couples and their children.

Once seated with the men, the young priest glances over at the women. His eyes rest on Madeleine. Laure recognizes the expression on his face. It is the same way that the hospital director and the Duke looked at Laure back in Paris. Only there is nothing sneering about the priest’s gaze, only a gentle curiosity and a hint of sadness. Laure hopes that one day a man will look at her that way. But the young priest’s efforts are lost on her pious friend. Madeleine’s eyes are closed. She is already deep within her soul thanking God for the cold contents of the cook’s bucket. Laure thinks that her gratitude to God should
be a direct reflection of the quality of his gift. She cannot bring herself to be grateful for the sludge that is as grey as the filthy blankets they cover themselves with.

The
faux-sauniers
prisoners, those convicted of selling salt, have spread their fleas to some of the soldiers and three-year men. But generally, the petty criminals are so pitiful with their worm-eaten skin and gaunt faces that they are tolerated by the others. They were brought onboard while the
Saint-Jean-Baptiste
awaited favourable weather. The prisoners had been shackled together after spending several days waiting for the ship on the Île de Ré, where they had been brought to prevent them from escaping. The captain had ordered these men untied as soon as the soldiers responsible for them had departed for shore. In the first week, a collection hat was passed among the male passengers, and some new clothing was purchased for the prisoners from the supplies bound for Canada. The outfits the prisoners were wearing were so tattered and moth eaten as to be barely holding together on their bodies.

The
filles à marier
are forbidden by Madame Bourdon to walk beyond a certain point in the low-ceilinged hold, to keep them away from these prisoners and the hardier men also bound for Canada. But there are no walls to keep the girls from hearing the men’s conversations. It is certainly a more interesting dormitory than the Salpêtrière, although more crowded. Madame Bourdon has tried to allot a separate section of the hold for the
filles de bonne naissance
who are bound for Neuville, the place where she lives with her husband. These women, mostly from Normandie, have significant dowries and are intended for marriage to more prominent men than the rest of the scraggly orphans. But Laure has heard the complaints of these women who are disappointed to learn from Madame
Bourdon that their future husbands are illiterate seigneurial tenants. The women are also upset at their treatment onboard the ship. Mostly they do not like being so close to the hospital girls.

The cook’s boys ladle out the stew first to the hired men, then to the decent country families, one scoop from the bucket into each bowl. The men groan when they see that they will be having the same grey mass from breakfast. “Can’t you even heat it up?” one of the men asks, but the cook’s boy replies that there are to be no fires lit outside the captain’s quarters on this journey. The men protest that there is obviously no wind to worry about since they haven’t moved in weeks. Those who have extra sprinklings reach into their sacks for them: a pinch of salt, a swallow of brandy, a slice of fresh apple.

Laure is so hungry tonight that even the smell of the cook’s sea biscuits mixed with cold fish broth has her salivating. As the boys drop the mounds on their plates, one of the girls from la Pitié laments the portion size. The others go quiet at her impudence, and Laure wonders what will happen to this girl who hasn’t learned how to hold her tongue. Complaining aloud about the meal at the Salpêtrière would have meant losing dinner for the night. But Madame Bourdon ignores the girl’s comment, leading them instead into an extended grace for the contents of their bowls. Laure looks around at the girls, wondering if any of the others have noticed. This Madame Bourdon, a rich wife from the colony, dresses and speaks like the officers at the Salpêtrière, but she cannot send anyone to the Maison de la Force or really punish them at all. Although they are crowded into a hold that is smaller than any of the dormitories of the hospital, Laure suddenly feels that there is a vast expanse around her. She doesn’t mind so much that she
has no delicacies to add to her dinner plate. She spoons the monotonous mush into her mouth, savouring the cool thickness of it, because mixed in somewhere with the dry biscuits and fishy stench of her meal is the taste of freedom.

When they hear the drum roll, the men hurry to wipe and put away their empty bowls and to pack up the flasks and jars of luxurious extras, hurrying for the ladder to the deck. Even the mothers reach for their children, hoisting them on their hips and grabbing them by the hand. The ship is finally moving. After three weeks of waiting, they are heading out to sea. Madame Bourdon raises her hand, indicating for the girls to remain seated and to finish their prayers despite the commotion. But when a cannon is fired from the deck, reverberating against the walls of the wooden hold, the girls grab their skirts and scramble to follow the others up the ladder.

It is easy to see that the ship is no longer still. The commotion alone would be enough to give it away. The sailors raise the sails on the masts, struggling against the wind to secure them. Laure can also feel the waves under the ship as they ride over them. She isn’t sure if she should join the three girls huddled together and wailing that they want to turn back, they are too afraid to go, or if she should rush forward to the bow of the ship where some men are hurtling their voices forward into the sea as if Canada will appear before them at any moment. They will be crossing the North Atlantic, the roughest seas, into the
New World. First they will pass the
îles anglaises
de Scilly, the southwest of Great Britain, then Ireland and into the freezing northern waters. This trajectory has been discussed daily by the men while they waited for the winds to pick up.

The disorder and confusion caused by the ship’s movement is resolved when the Jesuit priests, seconded by a Soeur hospitalière bound for the Hôtel-Dieu in Québec, and Madame Bourdon call for prayers. The group recites the Ave Maris Stella and the Domine Salvum fac regem, followed by the cry of “Vive le Roi!” The ship as if propelled by their prayers surges even faster into the open water. Laure is quiet, her hand sweaty as Madeleine reaches for it. Madeleine says, “Don’t worry. We’re leaving France behind, but God is still with us.”

Laure looks around her on the ship. The sailors are the only ones who seem ready for the journey. While the passengers pray, they go about their business tugging ropes, raising sails, checking that the ship’s weight is balanced. Behind the ship, the land quickly becomes so small that by the time they finish the prayers, it is nothing more than a grey set of hills. The passengers start asking the sailors the same questions about the journey that they asked three weeks ago. The men shout out the answers between tasks: Yes, there will be wine in Canada! And a church for each settlement with more priests than you’ll want to see! A fortune to be made? I’m afraid you got on the wrong ship, my man. In Canada, there are forests and men as savage as the beasts they hunt. The whole country is frozen solid for the better part of the year. But I wouldn’t know all of that for sure, since I have never set foot in the place. Each time I have seen the shore of Canada, I have decided that crossing back across the perilous sea is better than taking my chances on its hospitality.

The three girls are still crying, but have taken off their scarves and are waving them above their heads, their tiny fluttering voices joining in for the cries of “Vive le Roi.” Laure stands watching the coast recede, fading like the end of a dream. Then she turns, walking the distance across the deck to face the ocean ahead.

She tries to imagine how far they have to go across the sea to reach Canada. Six weeks if they catch favourable winds, two months or more if they do not. Laure had hoped that during the uneventful three weeks that they stood immobile gazing at the shore something would make them turn back, unable to leave after all. That they would disembark and make the return journey by straw-covered cart back through the towns and villages of northern France and up the river on the barge back into Paris. That she would be made to return to the dormitory, to the routine of prayers and paltry meals and the long days in the sewing workshop. There is no hope of that now.

One of the sailors, a young man whose beard is as red as his wind-burnt face, sees Laure looking at the wooden carving of the woman at the ship’s prow. “That’s Amphitrite,” he says. “She’s the one that will get us across to the other side. But you can’t trust her mood from one day to the next, especially as this ship has so many women on it. I don’t know whether I’m already in a mariner’s heaven, or if I should ask the captain to bring me back to shore and forget about my wages for the next half year at sea. If there’s one thing a sailor knows it’s that nothing good ever comes of a ship with women onboard.”

It is night and the waves beneath them continue to grow
stronger. The sailors are concerned about any possible signs of trouble. That must be why there are so many rules to be observed, such as no rabbits onboard because it is feared they will chew through sail cords. Even in speech, the passengers have been warned that rabbits must be referred to as the long-eared animals and not by name. Nobody is to whistle on the ship, as one indentured servant quickly found out when he received a sturdy sailor’s fist to the gut. “The winds will come soon enough,” the sailor had told him.