Bride of New France (34 page)

What did the Savage girl see in Laure’s eyes? Hatred? Envy? Sadness? Could she read the thoughts passing through her head? Deskaheh, wondering what the girl has seen to give her such a scare, turns around and sees Laure standing there. He looks surprised. Laure realizes she has made a terrible mistake in coming to the fair. Even though she travelled all the way from Pointe-aux-Trembles in the hopes of seeing Deskaheh, she didn’t really think he would be here. She tells herself now that she had intended to make a little money, to buy some extra
winter supplies in case Mathurin didn’t return at all. Of course she also planned to revisit the places where she had spoken with Deskaheh the previous summer: the cemetery where Madeleine was buried, the garden of the congregation, to stand beneath the attic window that she had looked out from. After all, hadn’t he provided her with the only happiness she had found in this vast, miserable country? Still, she hadn’t really expected to find more than his memory in Ville-Marie.

What a mistake Laure has made. The expression on Deskaheh’s face turns from shock to anger at the sight of her standing before him. He must have felt, like Laure, that his visits to Mathurin’s cabin in the middle of winter had been unreal. Some sort of frozen dream wherein he tracked a starving deer and dropped its warm, dead body at the doorstep of another hungry creature, as pathetic as the first. Had Deskaheh planned to cut through to her heart, but changed his mind because he knew that only the desires of a starving woman were buried in Laure’s chest? What courage could she offer from the enclosed walls of her husband’s cabin? After all, Deskaheh hadn’t come back afterwards, even though the winter stretched on much longer. Perhaps he also found it hard to believe that Laure actually existed, that she could be standing in the flesh so near to him in Ville-Marie.

He looks so much older this year, Laure thinks. Deskaheh, the boy she amused herself with last summer and who saved her life this winter, is a Savage man with a pregnant wife, and Laure is a fool. She turns from the couple and hurries through the crowd at the shore back toward the auberge where she is staying with the Tardifs. She rushes past men from as far away as Rivière-du-Loup and Tadoussac. They begin bargaining with the Savages for pelts even before they are unloaded on the
shore. The men’s voices meld together, a collective language of trade sprinkled with Savage words and provincial dialects.

The fair is also the time for French men to chase the daughters of the trading Savages. Some of the girls are excited by the adventure, while others run screaming in terror as the men track them like game through the streets. The sounds of the crowd are like a beehive in Laure’s head. The faces around her are even more blurred. She cannot distinguish any distinct form as the blood surges through her veins.

As Laure nears the auberge, she sees a fight break out between two men. She can’t tell what mixture they are of French and Savage as she hurries to the inn. Before she can enter, Deskaheh grabs Laure by the arm and turns her toward him. His is the only clear face in the crowd. Her body is still. She looks behind him for the pregnant girl but he is alone.

“What did you think?” he tries to say, but it comes out as “What do you think?”

Laure cannot respond. Her voice disappeared at the sight of the young Savage girl, the perfect joy of the two of them sitting there, reflecting back to her the loneliness she has lived with for so long. There is nothing Laure can say to him. She has no right to accuse him of adultery like she did Mathurin. Deskaheh hasn’t done anything wrong. It is her fault for thinking there was something more between them, for being foolish enough to come here looking for him.

“Are you well after the winter?” he asks her and looks down at her stomach the same way the colony men do. It seems that all the rest of Ville-Marie went into bloom after the hard winter.
Just as the Intendant predicted, most of the women now carry in their bellies the precious seeds of the King’s dreams for New France: unborn wealth, military strength, a great and loyal population on the banks of a tremendous river. Whereas Laure is nothing but a tired version of what she was a year ago. Everyone agrees that women without children are useless and have no place in the colony.

Deskaheh asks Laure where she is staying for the fair. She points to the alley behind her and tells him the name of the inn. He releases her arm, as if he had forgotten that he was still holding on to it. Laure wonders what he wanted to tell her, why he left behind the pregnant girl to follow her through the fair, but he doesn’t say anything more, and the next moment he has gone.

The innkeeper, the same Madame Rouillard, the midwife who travelled with them from Québec, makes an enormous profit on the debauchery at the annual fur-trade fair. She serves brandy, in barrelfuls as if it were water from the river, to the Algonquins and Montagnais and other Savages who come to trade. The only responsibility of the
Canadienne
is to keep the men from stabbing or shooting each other while drunk. For this she has the support of her brothers who live in Ville-Marie. The furs the Savages have brought with them from their forest homelands float out to the French at cheap prices on the stream of libations Madame Rouillard and the other innkeepers of Ville-Marie provide. For the duration of the fair, the authorities turn a blind eye to the illegal taverns that open up in the homes of Ville-Marie. The Sulpiciens, the Soeurs hospitalières, the
Jesuits, and all other
personnes religieuses
stay indoors and wait for the sinful summer orgy to pass. All of this Laure learns from Madame Rouillard, who never tires of speaking about the goings-on of the colony.

The fact that Laure, a woman staying alone, has been assigned her own room at the inn is proof of Madame Rouillard’s indulgent eye. The authorities have bigger troubles to contend with at the fair than a married woman staying alone in an inn. Not that anyone dares to publicly announce the fact that Laure has her own room and is not accompanied by a man, not even Madame Rouillard, who comments on most everything else. The Tardifs have their own room next to hers and are out trading the goods they carried with them in exchange for pelts. Madame Tardif is quite proud that she was able to afford a maid of all work to look after her children while she accompanied her husband to the fair. Laure doesn’t expect to see much of the couple until it is time to head back to the settlement next week.

At dusk Laure changes into the simple summer dress she has brought with her. She made it last winter from the cotton she had left over from sewing Mathurin’s shirts. She cut the neckline of the dress in imitation of the déshabillé style that was fashionable in Paris when she left. She also trimmed the neckline in blue linen. The dresses Laure made throughout the winter, from the finest materials in her chest, still hang from a section of the cabin’s ceiling in Pointe-aux-Trembles. She promised Mathurin she would try to sell these dresses over the summer to the notable women of the colony. The authorities would not allow the women of Pointe-aux-Trembles to dress in such finery. In fact Laure isn’t ready to see the dresses go just yet. They are companions of sorts for her. In her imaginings they are worn by girls from the Paris hospital who understand
the need for lacemaking and fine embroidery, for looking elegant even in forest cabins with crude men.

Laure ties her hair back from her face, letting her long tresses fall down her back. She has felt light and empty ever since she saw Deskaheh with the pregnant girl this afternoon. At least she is here at the inn, in the company of people, and far from Mathurin’s hut. It is such a desolate place, even in summer, far worse than the Salpêtrière ever was. Laure smells fresh bread and spices and roasting meat emanating from the inn’s kitchen and she hears voices speaking over the sounds of the clinking dishes. She locks the door to her room and walks downstairs.

Laure asks one of Madame Rouillard’s brothers to keep the men in the dining area away from her table, and he assures her that he will. The brother calls her Madame Turcotte, the name she gave when she signed in. He brings her a meat-and-vegetable stew and some wine. Laure takes a few of Mathurin’s coins from her purse to pay him for the food. There is a cheer to the room that Laure is not accustomed to feeling at mealtime.

Just as Laure is finishing her stew and about to return to her room, Deskaheh enters the inn. A few fur-trading men turn from the bar to look at the Savage who has just passed through the door. Deskaheh looks around the room and, spotting Laure sitting alone in the shadows, he walks toward her table. Madame Rouillard’s second brother, older with a tough face, comes out from behind the counter, but Laure raises her hand to inform the brother that she knows Deskaheh and that it is acceptable for him to sit with her. The innkeeper retreats behind the counter, but continues to keep an eye on Laure’s table.

“How is your husband?” Deskaheh asks, refusing Laure’s offer of a seat.

“He is still the same dog,” Laure replies, wondering why Deskaheh has come here to ask her about Mathurin. “He is gone most of the time. You probably see him more than I do.”

Deskaheh considers her words for a moment. “Maybe you should have married someone else.” He looks toward the men at the bar, as if one of them might make a good match for her.

Laure has been watching these
coureurs de bois
drink brandy while they exchange tales of their fur-trading adventures. “You have seen how all the dogs behave. They are all the same. I should have fought harder to stay in France.”

Deskaheh nods. “Most of the French men go back where they came from after a few months here, sometimes a year or two. They stay long enough to get some pelts and go back when they grow tired of life here.” Deskaheh’s French has improved over the last year. “They complain about everything. The winter, the summer, the bugs, the food, the women.” He laughs.

Deskaheh’s eyes move to the neckline of Laure’s simple dress. She feels ashamed. She put it on to feel clean and calm. It is nothing more than a garment for sleeping in.

“Where is your other dress?” he asks.

“I burned it,” Laure responds right away, even though it isn’t true.

Deskaheh nods as if he understands why she would have done that. “What do you think?” he asks her again. He means
What did you expect?
but his eyes are devoid of the anger and surprise she saw in them this afternoon. His face is wide and gentle. There is pity in his expression. It is the same look a kind man would give an old horse before shooting it. Or the sort of
expression on the face of Madame du Clos and Madame Gage. Laure has learned to seek out kindness the way others search for food and water. Her survival has depended on it.

“I don’t want to be with you,” she says, even though he never asked her that at all.

“This cannot happen. There are things that … I … we … call it—” Deskaheh says.

“Don’t talk to me as if I am stupid or a child. I know how foolish it is for us to be with each other. It serves no purpose at all. You have a family and I have learned to live with a pig.”

“In one year we have both grown up.” Deskaheh inhales through his mouth as if he is about to say something more, but doesn’t.