Bride of New France (25 page)

Laure dips the pen in ink. She is still thinking of the funeral, of the Savage man who told her his name. She doesn’t have anyone she can send a letter to, so she writes to Madeleine, who is dead but still Laure’s best and only friend. Besides,
Laure has learned that it is probably better not to write a letter to a living person. In her experience words on paper are best kept secret.

July 1669

Dear Madeleine
,

It is the day of your funeral. I have been given my own room. I suppose I am the Queen of the New World now. From the window I can see my dominion, a garden below and endless countryside beyond. Only my subjects are wild beasts, such as the raccoon, the beaver, the fox, the marten, and a countless number of forest birds. My prince is a soldier who looks like a pig. He defended my honour and saved me from a Savage who is Iroquois and Algonquin, both a friend and an enemy
.

As it turns out, we were sent here for nothing. Most of the men want nothing to do with the women from the Salpêtrière. They are being forced into marriages when they are perfectly content to run through the forests in search of furs and Savage girls. They don’t really want to settle down here and build homes and villages, towns in the forest. Most of them just want to leave, to return to Old France
.

There is nothing I want more than to be able to blow out this candle and be back in the Sainte-Claire dormitory. To hear the morning bell, to see you kneeling at your cot, to eat what little there is. To know that nothing comes of complaining. To feel like you do, that a nourished body is nothing compared
to a nourished soul. To be happy to wait. I am sorry for all that I have ruined. I am not worthy of your forgiveness
.

Your friend
,

Laure Beauséjour

    Part Three    

Ces filles de France purent s’apprivoiser au cheval et au canot; apprendre à préparer le pot-au-feu du pays, à faire la lessive à la rivière, à coudre ou à raccommoder, à filer et à tisser laine et lin, à tenir un ménage, à élever des enfants; surtout, s’habituer à vivre avec la peur des Indiens et à surmonter cette peur
.

[These daughters of France became accustomed to the horse and the canoe; they learned to prepare stews with whatever meat was available, to do their laundry at the river, to sew and mend, to spin and weave wool and flax, to manage a household, to raise children; but mostly, they learned to live with the fear of the Indians and to overcome that fear.]

—MARIE-LOUISE BEAUDOIN,

LES PREMIÈRES ET LES FILLES DU ROI À VILLE-MARIE

    15    

L
aure sits in the congregation’s garden. She likes to spend her time here, away from the others. Ever since the funeral, she has been given permission to stay alone in the alcove, away from the dormitory where the other girls sleep. There is no denying the kindness of the Mère Bourgeoys and her two novices, Marie Raisin and Anne Hiou. Even Madame Crolo, who is called the “donkey of the house” because she works incessantly like the most brutish servant woman, is gentle enough. Although the congregation women are dedicated to housing the women from France and preparing them for husbands, their main occupation is teaching the Savage and French girls of the colony. Some of these young girls, orphaned perhaps, are boarding at the congregation. In addition, the building is used for signing marriage contracts, for teaching religion to old women on Sundays, and for laying out the bodies of the dead on the night before the funeral.

Laure meets the wealthy praying girl, Jeanne Le Ber, at the congregation. She is seven years old and already knows that she wants a life of prayer and mortification of the flesh. Although her dowry is valued at fifty thousand écus and she has suitors
from Ville-Marie all the way down the river to Québec and across the sea to Old France, the little girl vows she will remain a virgin. Laure recognizes the stubborn set of Jeanne Le Ber’s lips and knows that she will never marry, even though others tell her she is only a child and she has her whole life ahead and a fortune to manage.

Sometimes Jeanne sits with Laure and confesses the troubles in her heart. Some children are born into old age, is what Marguerite Bourgeoys says. The little girl tells Laure that she has only baby brothers and no sisters. She says that her parents do not like her spending so much time at Marguerite Bourgeoys’ congregation and at the Hôtel-Dieu chapel, but these are the places she enjoys. Her father says that a young girl can’t possibly spend the whole day praying like an old woman, but Jeanne says that she is content to do so. Her father plans to send her away to the Ursulines in Québec, where she will get away from these strange rituals and learn what is expected of her.

Besides her prayers, Jeanne enjoys learning needlework. Laure recognizes in the child the quick fingers, long and lean, of an expert seamstress. She stitches religious scenes onto fabric and gives her work to Marguerite Bourgeoys or to the Hospitalières at the Hôtel-Dieu. Laure cannot help but think that such talent and a fortune besides are wasted on this melancholic creature. Jeanne refuses to put on the dresses of fine material from France that her mother lays out for her each morning. Instead she wears a plain linen dress like the Salpêtrière uniform that Laure was so eager to shed.

Some days Jeanne’s mother can be heard sobbing in the company of Marguerite Bourgeoys. “Ma petite fille, she whips her perfect white flesh until ugly welts appear. She refuses to eat and grows so thin. How can I watch my only daughter, the
child I caressed and rubbed with ointment, that I handled with such careful hands, inflict wounds upon herself ?”

Marguerite Bourgeoys is a practical woman who says that the best devotion comes through hard work and serving others, that scrubbing floors sends prayers straight to heaven. She doesn’t know what to tell the family of Jeanne Le Ber. She can only do for this wealthy child what she does for all the girls under her care. She encourages Jeanne to grow humble through hard work, to carry pails of water, to light fires and to keep wood burning, to prepare the meats and vegetables for the daily meals. In this way eventually the little girl will be ready to marry someone and to manage a household. But Jeanne wants only to stare at walls, to kneel before the altar, to read her prayer book, and to stitch religious motifs. She is not interested in hard work.

Of course Jeanne is not like the other girls of the congregation, as she has with her at all times an attendant, her cousin Anna Barroy. This woman is boisterous and plump and concerned with practical affairs. She is the one who encourages Jeanne to eat and who coaxes her up from her knees when too many hours have passed.

The
filles à marier
think that Jeanne Le Ber is a foolish girl and they ignore her presence. It is only Laure who sees something familiar in her. For this little child has in her the piousness of Madeleine Fabrecque, the wealth and status of Mireille Langlois, and the same stubborn heart that beats in Laure’s chest. She will become a saint, devoting her entire life to worship, just as she says, and nobody, not her parents, not even Marguerite Bourgeoys, will convince her otherwise.

Unlike most religious orders, the Filles de la Congrégation, as they are called, are free to travel about the countryside.
Laure wonders how these women could have left behind prosperous lives in Old France to come to this colony. Marie Raisin confessed to her that she misses the literature and music, as if Laure knew of these things at the Salpêtrière. She doesn’t bother to tell Marie that she has eaten her first meat in several years here at the congregation.

So far Laure’s circumstances have been more comfortable in the colony. It is the first time she has had her own room. How strange it feels to wake up alone in a bed and to look up at the sloping attic ceiling and out the tiny window streaming in light meant only for her eyes. During the day, Laure has also been excused from joining the other
filles à marier
in their lessons in the congregation’s workshop. They are learning to do things Laure already knows, like how to knit wool socks and sew cotton shirts for their future husbands. Laure would rather be outside in the heat than inside listening to the congregation women go on about what great wives the peasant girls will make. The other girls don’t really mind that Laure has special permission to be in the garden, as most of them spent their time in Old France outside in the fields and are happy now to be able to keep their skin away from the sun. They would prefer to learn to sew, as many of them were accustomed only to brute outdoor work. To excuse her absence, the nuns tell the others that Laure will soon be well enough to join them. She doesn’t feel sick at all.

This is the first garden Laure has been in. In Paris, only wealthy women like the Superior at the Salpêtrière had gardens. Even Madame d’Aulnay didn’t have her own garden. Laure sits on the soil between the rows of vegetables and herbs and lifts her face to the sun, imagining that she is back in France and that this plot of land is her very own. After a
moment, she shakes herself out of her reverie and sets about her routine of looking after the crops the way Mère Bourgeoys instructed her.

She stands up to check the height of the cornstalks, then she walks through the rows of tomatoes and beans, making sure there is no evidence of an animal having slid under the fence in the night. Using both hands, Laure yanks the tough weeds from the soil between the plants and tosses them to the side. She crouches down at the strawberries and picks a few to eat.

When she looks up, Laure is surprised to see that Deskaheh is kneeling behind the fence with one of the other Savages from the funeral. She wonders how long they’ve been there watching her. They laugh when she notices them. Deskaheh’s nose is bruised and swollen, which makes him look even uglier than before. But his grin is youthful and relaxed. He sticks his hand through the fence, and Laure jumps back. Both of the boys laugh.

The girls have been told not to give food directly to the Savages who beg outside the congregation. Donations first have to receive the approval of the Mère Bourgeoys. Laure knows that Deskaheh and his companion would be chased away by one of the nuns. They are troublemakers and not true beggars, who wear baggy white shirts like the French fur traders.