Order of Good Cheer (24 page)

He picks up a pen and dips it, to try again. Indelible ink can be his fresh rain. It can be no cause for gloom, this committing the unknown world to parchment. No burden, that he be certain enough of his marks to apply indelible ink to these empty wastes. He can, with a full heart, give new, human truth to God's landforms and to His sea, making them usable to all the men yet to come to these places.

So he adds lines of shading to the southern shore of the River of Saint-Jean. Some trees, to show where timber can be taken.

He feels a swelling gladness in his chest. And he will confess here, to the sad silence of his candle, that as he makes these marks that show the very growth west of New France, and of their King's lands, he thinks neither of men yet to come nor even of New France. As he moves his ink, hearing the scratch as
he wounds the fresh sheet with black blood, he is thinking only of himself. This — he says to his heart — is where we have been. He thinks of himself as
we
, though not as one who is royal. He refers to his hands, and his vision, and his body, and his memories. All of it feels like we.

Perhaps because he lacks family. In any case, he draws, from the sketch, the westward push up the River of Saint-Jean. He is careful to show any fatal rocks, and shades them well and with respect. He adds some smaller rocks in their likely yet hidden locations, though he isn't as certain they are there.

STILL STEADY ON
his course of getting to know these men, whether or not any wants to be known, he contemplates each in turn. Tired of the guilt he feels at learning, yet again, that here is another fellow whose qualities he does not like, he wonders, Whose fault? But he doubts that fault is the issue. Like a divorce of magnets flipped, dislike seems more a force of nature.

He also tries to find no fault in himself when he understands something more. Since he himself is lately bored, melancholic, and even verging on despair, it stands to reason that the other men are as well. Indeed, he can see it in them. And yet shouldn't this understanding make him feel for them, forgive them, love them? It does not.

In any case, the men. For instance the apothecary d'Amboisee. Though of Samuel's own age and soft-spoken, d'Amboisee is an irritant largely because of his superstitions, which have gotten worse. Perhaps superstition is not the word for his affliction, which is definable only through description: upon entering a room he will eye every corner of it with pronounced wariness.
He will eventually make a judgement of some sort and then go and stand or sit in only one area. Sometimes this makes him crowd absurdly with other bodies already located there, and other times this makes him sit altogether alone. But where he places himself has nothing to do with people, and all to do with what the rest of them cannot see. He neither apologizes nor explains, but from what Samuel has gathered, the apothecary's irritating sensitivity is attuned to such things as the time of day, the moon's arc, the humour, and sometimes even the
birthdate
of those who have been in the room and those who have yet to arrive, et cetera. He owns a suspicious and irritating vision. Perhaps it is the laudanum cordial Samuel knows the man takes in some quantity; but more likely it is the man himself.

Perhaps Samuel's problem — as Lescarbot gladly points out to him — is his attempt to leap the walls that naturally keep the classes of men apart. The lawyer could well be right. For Samuel's search for affinity within the common class has for the most part served him up irritants of a ruder kind. When the foul Dédé belches and then slaps the nearest surface, seeing him as a simple carnivore does help Samuel refrain from judgement, but this understanding does nothing to cushion Samuel against the sharp sense of the man, and the actual smell of him; much as, though one might
understand
a fowl-house not properly slopped out, one does not want to stand within it and breathe deeply. Thus, understanding is not love, though Samuel has heard in some philosophies that it is.

He finds it worth noting in this regard that not many savages irritate him. Perhaps this is because he does
not
understand them and, so far, can find them mostly fascinating. Even the savages far to the west: they commit such horrors upon one another, true, but their tortures don't concern him and their
thievery is for the most part ingenious. That time he found his best knife under the woman's foot — how did she get it there?

And some of them, especially the Mi'qmah here, can be delightful. So openly loving are they when they trust.

Membertou, last night at table, referred humorously to his age. Samuel believes that's what he did. At one point, he playfully grabbed for Poutrincourt's boy as he walked past with the wine jug, which Membertou wrestled away from him, mostly in merriment. Membertou was bare-armed as always, and, wine jug now in hand and poised to pour it around, he stopped to regard the crepey underskin of his own arm as it jiggled, noticing his aged flesh, it seemed, for the first time. Perhaps he was self-conscious, for he looked up at the nobles seated with him and he on purpose jiggled the flesh anew. With his other hand he pointed to this offending wrinkled skin, laughed, and said, “I have arrived in this body too early!”

Samuel believes that is what he said. His Mi'qmah language improves. He has begun giving informal lessons to Lucien, who requested it of him, which deepens the trust between them. Indeed, Samuel believes the carpenter would have told his reasons if he had been so forward as to ask. So they both remain safe for leaving it unspoken. In all, they have had several sessions during chance meetings outside the walls. Samuel has taught him words on the subject of weather, and seasons, and animals, as well as some nautical terms. Last meeting, Lucien tilted his head as will a pup to learn that the Mi'qmah sun,
nakuset
, and moon,
tepkuset
, are to the savages to the west one word alone,
gizos
. He then claimed he could not decide if, in having but one word for these two heavenly bodies, the western savages were stupid or strangely wise. Sometimes he asks Samuel words he does not know, or knows only in the western
tongue, and sometimes Lucien will offer up his own Mi'qmah word unknown to Samuel, almost as in friendly trade. The first time, Lucien somewhat boastfully and with eye aglint counted to five —
newt, tapu, sist, new, nan
— and it wasn't till he was done that Samuel understood it wasn't he who had instructed him in this. But generally they are words of little use: words for the items of clothing Lucien himself wears, words for domestic utensils, and some for the minor plants, and for certain spirits that govern the savages' lives. They also have the word
googoo
, and it is also a monster, but hereabouts it is not thought unfriendly. Last meeting, Lucien taught him tongue,
kilnu
, and belly button,
kili
, and Adam's apple,
joqlem
.

TONIGHT, PERHAPS AS
a purgative, and to work off too much wine, Samuel writes as if in his journal, but this time at length, holding back nothing. He uses the back of a sketch he no longer has use for, and thinks he shall burn it after, and this gives his pen a quickness and freedom:

15
décembre
1606
(to burn)
Regarding us and our neighbouring savages, and our taking of food: if our way is up, theirs is down, if ours right, theirs left — so many and so large are the differences. Note but one: they eat as if no tomorrow is coming, verily stuffing themselves until the joint of moose (for instance) is clean bone. Even that bone they'll crack in the fire and suck for dessert. And then —pardon my fancy — sleep now attacks and sucks
them
, all greasy-faced and overcome with meat as they faint like dogs and fall snoring onto their own arms. We, on the other hand, nibble and fuss at our biscuit and salt beef, ease the swallowing with some wine. Note another:
they eat their meat unadorned. And indeed it is often naught but meat in their meal — they eat a beaver, or a stag, or a fish, naught else, not even salt! We, as if covering God's offering, salt it, clove it, mace it, pepper sage thyme sugar it, or soak it in vinegar until vinegar is what it is. Excuse another fancy, but a rakish poet might suggest that while we dance with and court our food overlong, they marry theirs directly. One might also add that the savage palate never lets a lack of fire get in the way of their more hasty love either. I propose that raw flesh is less charming to them only because it remains flexed and is less submissive to their chewing and their swallowing.

This evening Lescarbot, in mocking their food and their manners (it is a wary mocking, for he is still afraid of them), remarked on their ignorance of “God's etiquette,” as if there is such a thing, as if He wastes His evenings sitting in judgement of whether one stabs with one's fork or eases it under. Lescarbot is a fool. God doesn't dine, except perhaps on our good sense and cheer, which works to alert rather than tire Him, if He deigns notice us at all.

In any event I would now propose a hybrid menu, a way to get the men to eat of the savages' fresh food, especially their strange berries and herbaceous small vegetables, most of which they save by drying. I claim it is no accident that, for want of fresh food, our common men sicken — as several seem to be sickening now — while the savages do not. Nor do we nobles sicken who sit at Poutrincourt's table, a table adorned more often than not with whatever the savages have killed and brought to us, fresh, for barter.

I have seen the equation too often to ignore it yet longer. It is now not a question but a truth. Lescarbot laughs at the idea and, since he owns wit, he also owns Poutrincourt's ear.
Through this whole talk, our priest Fr. Vermoulu does not blink but rather chews along with the rest of the cattle. He continually pronounces savage food as
profane
. And so the men turn away at the thought of savage food — the thought, more so than the food itself. But nor are the savages themselves free of lunacy, for of all the world's food, they savour most our dry biscuit.

Not many deserve the tongue God gave us.

After putting down and cleaning his pens, Samuel finds he is breathing almost hard, and needs must rise and walk, though it is late. Striding the courtyard, and passing through the gate, and even so long as he is in sight of the walls, he feels that every man awake knows the words he has written and carries in his pocket, in a crumpled ball.

SOME THREE DAYS
before Yule, Samuel's friend the good sagamore Membertou is finally granted his wish. He and his family (and some whom Samuel suspects are not his family) are invited into the Christian faith.

The politics of this manoeuvre have not been simple. Membertou has all along piped his plea loudly and like a boy to any who would listen, even the common men. But of late Lescarbot — who now maintains that, in the eyes of the King, the more savage souls saved the better (that is, better for them and their enterprise here) — has been seeding the ear of the Sieur. Samuel cares not one way or the other, except that he finds it repugnant to witness Lescarbot's entreaties for they are based solely on connivance, and only a little on religion. Lescarbot clearly believes the savages are no more capable of holding the Scripture's truth than an unbunged cask can hold
wine. And now Poutrincourt has beseeched the unsmiling Vermoulu to carry out this conversion and give birth to two score of new Catholics. Poutrincourt's motivation here is that the priest has fallen ill with the scurve, and so the good noble thinks to do it now, or do it never.

At the door to the dining hall, Fougeray blows a trumpet and pulls the horn away to reveal a smile of condescension. So much for the earnest solemnity of saving New France's souls, thinks Samuel, sitting at table, watching the Mi'qmah troop in. Though some would argue that what matters most is the power of the rite and not the readiness of the supplicants.

The evening is cause for merriment if nothing else, and some of the Mi'qmah, the children in particular, seem transported and have been made marvellously happy, jumping up where they are and laughing at the ceiling, and so maybe this is justification enough. Barging in bellicose, and wearing a live bird attached in his hair, Membertou himself is like a child oaf. Samuel would dare say the old sagamore has lately come to welcome the next goblet as heartily as a common French sailor; indeed he knows most of their songs now and is in a hurry to lead in their singing. At the same time — something Samuel has noticed before tonight — even at the height of his bellowing, Membertou steals knowing and capricious glances at his wives and sons, and though their bodies' vocabulary does not include winking, his bemused eyes flash the equivalent. It is as though he is suggesting to his followers that it is the French who are the children, and he their guide, and moreover that his manipulations take place without their knowledge.

Membertou shouts his habitual “Ho-ho!” to the table of nobles, and greets them first with an upward flourish of a hand, pausing in this savage salute, and then moves to them each in turn to shake their hand.

Vermoulu stands before them all, seemingly at the ready, and yet also unclear how to proceed. He is young, and how many conversions, or even baptisms, could a young priest have conducted in a land of priests? Vermoulu has said nothing about his health, but he was spotted two days ago leaving both the apothecary's and the surgeon's quarters, his countenance glum. Samuel can see the signs. The priest appears dizzy on his feet and walks with pain, as if his legs feel twice their bulk, and he chews timidly, in fear of eating the swollen meat of his cheeks. More and more, Samuel marks the marriage of food and ill humour — this is a man whose privilege allows him to have his own garden and eat at the nobles' table but he won't. In a gesture of humility and poverty that appears only prideful, he insists on nothing but beef and biscuit, and not much of it. Moreover, his condemnation of many of the savage foodstuffs as profane has put many of the men off these good, though strange, foods too. The deer's stomach, for instance, which was one fortnight ago boiled in its entirety and the green contents divided and eaten, and which tasted near as good as a spinach purée, was declared by him a blasphemy because, in his words, “it is food already swallowed, and therefore almost excrement.” It was the only green stuff they had seen in two months, save the skins of some small tubers. Samuel lightly challenged and queried him, and Vermoulu could not substantiate his claim with a citing of book and verse. Samuel has seen other men of the church become as this one: to them, their own insight becomes dogma. Indeed it seems a perversion common to all leadership, especially, Samuel would venture, in an isolated settlement.