Bride of New France (39 page)

“You cannot keep the child. Your husband will know it is from another man. Even if he remains quiet about it, people like Madame Tardif will spread the gossip all the way to Ville-Marie. There will be consequences for you and for the child.”

Laure attempts to follow Madame Rouillard’s thoughts, but she cannot raise her eyes from her belly. She hasn’t permitted herself to think about the outcome, the punishments that are levelled against adulterous women, including death. She has not dared to imagine what will happen when the child is born, a being separate from her and clearly not belonging to Mathurin. Like the skin of her midriff, Laure has let herself believe that this pregnancy will stretch on. That it has no end. That the half-remembered songs she sings are enough.

Laure doesn’t want to hear what Madame Rouillard is suggesting. She wants to scream like a crazed woman at the Salpêtrière. To think that she will not keep this child, even though doing so could have her sentenced to death, makes Laure feel like she is losing her mind.

“Listen to me. It is better for everyone. For you, your husband, and especially for the child, if the Algonquin, the father, takes the baby.”

Deskaheh?
Laure hasn’t seen him since the summer. Surely he doesn’t even know she is pregnant.

“The authorities don’t count the Savage children or question their origins the way they do for the French ones. Now, listen. I have been to see him beyond Ville-Marie toward the Outaouais River and he has agreed to take the baby. He was very concerned about you and wanted to come and see you, which I advised him not to do. He isn’t bad, that one. A little
foolish, but he has a kind heart. Misfortune usually chooses to strike fools with kind hearts.”

Laure asks what Deskaheh will tell his village. How will he explain this particular misfortune to them?

“They have adopted children before. It is a war practice of theirs. Deskaheh was adopted himself. But try not to think about the outcome of the child’s life. After all, it is better to be raised by Savages than to die.”

Laure nods. The baby will live. Both she and the baby will survive, apart but alive. Laure has lain awake while the Tardif household slept and implored the grace of her dead friend Madeleine, the only divine angel she trusts to listen, for this very outcome. Her prayers have been answered.

“There is still much to do just to make sure that the child, once born, is brought to Deskaheh before your husband or Madame Tardif sees it. But don’t worry about these things for now.”

Her child will live. There will be a second chance for everyone. Laure imagines Madeleine’s beatific face smiling. Laure is filled with gratitude.

    22    

L
aure’s second spring in Canada was the windiest any settler could remember. It was hard to sleep each night because they heard the wind whistling like a tormented being through the cracks of their small cabins. It was as if this year the winter was unwilling to relinquish its hold on the colony. Laure had many dreams. The sailor Ti-Jean who had crushed Madeleine’s spirit rode the horses that came to wrench Laure from the arms of her father. In one dream, Ti-Jean was a monster dressed like the Bonhomme Terre-Neuve.

Laure lay on her side, unable to turn over from the weight of her belly, imagining the sounds of women screaming as Iroquois warriors raided the settlement, brandishing the long-haired, bloody scalps in victory. There were so many noises in the cabin, the Tardif children coughing and whimpering in their sleep. Madame Tardif slept through it all with roaring snores and awoke refreshed for her duties each day like a commanding soldier, whereas Laure began those spring mornings weary and drained, convinced that the demons of hell had visited her the previous night to chastise her for her sin.

If the baby inside her can hear any of it or feel the disquiet building in its mother, it shows no signs. It continues to grow through the beginning of April, kicking harder than before. By the end of the month, Laure is far bigger than any of the settlers have ever seen a pregnant woman who still has two months remaining to her pregnancy. She can no longer do much of anything other than lie in bed on her side. There is still no sign of Mathurin, and Madame Tardif has grown so tired of her unwanted guest that she comes in from her outside work just long enough to grudgingly prepare some broth for Laure and to sigh about how this winter has left her household economies in a dire state. In truth, Laure feels the woman is a bit afraid of Laure’s unnatural size.

When May arrives, even though Mathurin has not returned with the other men from the fur country, Madame Tardif asks Laure to move back to her own cabin. She promises that she will bring Laure some soup and help as much as she can, given her own woeful circumstances, until Mathurin comes back.

Once Laure is in her own cabin, Madame Rouillard comes every few days to study her pregnant belly, to see if it is time to deliver, and also to prepare soup and bread and a little meat for her. The midwife feels Laure’s stomach and assures her that the baby she is carrying is healthy, if the strength of its kicks is any sign. She offers to bleed Laure, to try to bring down some of the swelling in her arms and legs, but Laure doesn’t see how any treatment other than getting the child out of her will do anything at all. She does take the herbs that are supposed to speed along the birth, because the midwife feels it is taking too long for the baby to be born.

At last, one night in the middle of May, the baby starts to come. At first Laure is uncertain whether the tightening of her abdomen and the pain that follows is any different from the signs of impending birth she has been feeling for weeks. But after a few hours, when she can no longer sleep, Laure gets out of bed and lays down some pelts on the floor of the cabin. She is unsure what force is guiding her actions, but somehow she is unafraid and purposeful. There is no room in her mind for thoughts or doubts as she prepares to give birth.

She doesn’t know how long she stays like this, her face pressing into the furs, the smell of dead animal flesh rising into her nostrils. She attempts to doze between the spasms of pain. There is nothing to do but endure. She forgets all that has come before and what lies ahead. Hours pass like minutes and minutes become an eternity of agony.

Laure has been sleeping fitfully, caught between the world of dreams and the pain that keeps her awake. But in an instant the characters of her dream go cascading as if on a waterfall right out of her mind. She rises to her knees and feels a moment of terror. The months of swelling have deflated in a rush of warm liquid on the furs beneath her. The most excruciating pain Laure has ever felt replaces the bloated feeling. She releases into the settlement first one scream and then another.

Laure has opened the door to the cabin and is about to head outside, possibly into the forest, anywhere to escape the pain that is almost relentless now. But Madame Tardif is there, blocking her way. She pushes her back into the cabin and onto the pelts and tells her that she will send her
husband to get the midwife. Laure can feel the baby thrashing inside her.

When Madame Rouillard arrives a few hours later, she dismisses Madame Tardif from her duties, saying she will call on her closer to the time when the baby is due to arrive. Laure hears Madame Rouillard say that it probably won’t be before morning, that it takes a long time for a first baby to emerge.

The midwife helps Laure onto her elbow and lights the gas lamp she uses sparingly for the delivery of babies born at night. She lifts Laure’s skirt and spreads wide her legs. Laure cannot feel Madame Rouillard’s hands as she examines her, but she manages to calm herself a little by looking at the midwife’s face.

“The baby is coming, but try to hold it back,” she hears her say. “You haven’t stretched enough to push it out.” Laure feels her eyes rolling into the back of her head. It is impossible to heed the midwife’s advice. She cannot stop the pressure of the baby’s head against her spine. She is sure it will push through her back. The midwife comes close to Laure’s face and tells her to forget the pain and to listen to her words. Then she works to stretch the opening between Laure’s legs to let the head through.

Laure cannot concentrate on Madame Rouillard’s voice or the room around her. She imagines a door opening in her mind and she passes through it. A bright fire burns in the room and she is back among the characters from the dreams that have been tormenting her all winter. She makes a snarling noise like a sick dog and resumes her screaming. The midwife tells Laure she is going to get a pail of water.

In bringing this overgrown child into the world of the living, Laure catches a glimpse of the world of the dead. She has been seeing it in her dreams all along as the baby grew
through the long winter. But when the giant head tears its way out of her body and she begins to lose blood, Laure glimpses something else. It is as if she can no longer hear the noises in the cabin and there is only a deep and distant quiet.

This time she sees a stream as peaceful and inviting as a summer sky. The babbling sound is as gentle as birds playing in the branches. She doesn’t feel pain and she is able to walk like she did when she first arrived in the New World. The heavy weight of the child is gone. Someone is there by the water. His hair is as long and black as hers and his arms are the colour of tree branches and just as strong. I didn’t know Jesus would greet me like this to welcome me to heaven, Laure thinks. She recognizes him as he comes toward her. It has been a long time since Deskaheh has watched her.

This is your home, he says. She thinks he is referring to his arms, because she wants to run into them, to feel them around her slim body. But he smiles and extends his hand to indicate the great expanse where they are standing.

Laure wants to believe him, to shed the heavy clothes she is wearing, to drop the memories she has of stone buildings and men with stone hearts and the heavy, heavy stone she has been carrying in her stomach. She wants to bare her skin to the sky and let go of everything else. Stand with him in the cool, calm water. But there is too much distance between them and she cannot reach him. The peaceful river becomes the angry sea, and in an instant Laure is swept under.